Unit 30 P6

Legal Issues and Copyright If another person has taken a photo, drawn a drawing, made a movie or made some sort of graphics on their computer, then they have copyright to their works. And unless they give up all copyright (as in they state that others may use their work), what other people can do with the work is limited. Doing something, which could be colouring, distorting or changing it in anyway, does not make it a new creation, and therefore will breach the creator’s copyright. This also ties in with plagiarism, which is the act of stealing another’s work and passing it off as their own. Unless it is obviously meant to be a parody, then taking an image and passing it off as your own, such as the Mona Lisa, you’d be breaching copyright. You can’t copy a website either, even if you change the graphics (such as the colour scheme) or draw your own graphics (as long as you’re obviously copying the other website) or make your scripts, stylesheets or HTML-documents. If your website looks almost exactly like another, it’ll become illegal. This applies mostly to exceptional web-sites, which someone has spent a lot of time and money developing, not the sites you get using standard PHP-package that many other use. These sites will all look quite similar, but you shouldn’t try to copy original graphical elements. This also applies to intellectual property. Under the law for intellectual property, owners are given certain exclusive rights to a variety of assets, like music, literary works, and art. Inventions and discoveries, and words,phrases, patterns and symbols. Although many of the legal principles controlling intellectual property rights have changed over the years, it was not until the 19th century that the term 'intellectual property' began to be used, and not until the late 20th century that it became ordinary in most countries. A trademark is a recognisable