Legal Issues of Web Site Development Selecting a domain name without infringing on another can be complicated. For more information on this complex issue, consult one of the web sites listed at the end of this article. Copyright infringement is a violation of one or more of the five exclusive rights listed in the Copyright Act. Web page owners have the right to prevent others from reproducing (or copying) a work, publicly displaying a work, or distributing a work. Web page authors should not copy the work of others. An Internet service provider (ISP) can also be liable for copyright infringement even if they are not directly involved in the copying of protected materials. This is the reason why reputable hosting companies have very strict terms and policies for the use of their servers. Creating your own images for web sites is the safest way to avoid infringement violations. It is better to create your own images completely rather than use another image as a starting point. Even if an image is drastically altered, the new image may infringe upon the copyright of the first image by being a derivative work. One is able to use third party images if permission is granted by the author; licensed images can be used if you agree to the terms of the license and there are some free images out there. There are also many websites offering royalty-free stock images, which allow the use of an image on more than one project. Original text is not a copyright infringement. However, using text
from another source can be an infringement. Some copying of text is
allowed and explained in the fair use statute of the Copyright Act.
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