World Wide Web - Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property

The intellectual property rights for any creative work initially rests with its creator. Web users who want to publish their work onto the World Wide Web, however, need to be aware of the details of the way they do it. If artwork, photographs, writings, poems, or technical innovations are published by their creator onto a privately owned web server, then they may choose the copyright and other conditions freely themselves. This is unusual though; more commonly work is uploaded to web sites and servers that are owned by other organizations. It depends upon the terms and conditions of the site or service provider to what extent the original owner automatically signs over rights to their work by the choice of destination and by the act of uploading.

Many users of the web erroneously assume that everything they may find on line is freely available to them as if it was in the public domain. This is almost never the case, unless the web site publishing the work clearly states that it is. On the other hand, content owners are aware of this widespread belief, and expect that sooner or later almost everything that is published will probably be used in some capacity somewhere without their permission. Many publishers therefore embed visible or invisible digital watermarks in their media files, sometimes charging users to receive unmarked copies for legitimate use. Digital rights management includes forms of access control technology that further limit the use of digital content even after it has been bought or downloaded.