Copyright and Derivative Works
So yesterday’s situation serves as a good refresher on the concept of a “derivative work”. In the United States, federal copyright law defines a derivative work as follows:
A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.
The law goes on to say this in Section 106:
… the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights … to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work
This is US law, of course, and not all countries have such an explicit definition. Canada currently does not, for example, though the copyright legislation does list similar rights as examples of what the copyright owner can do.
The point here is to be very careful when creating something based on someone else’s work. As I discussed before in my Private Label Rights Pitfalls article, just because something is labelled as “PLR” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is PLR.
The easiest way to avoid copyright problems is to write everything yourself from scratch. Use other material as research, sure, but make sure you’re not just rewriting someone else’s content so that it falls under the “derivative work” rule… As ad AdSense publisher, you’ll probably find that you have better results from natural organic search traffic with completely original content anyhow.
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3 Responses to “Copyright and Derivative Works”
Though I agree that the best way to avoid copyright issues is to create your own content, it is worth noting that there is a lot of great content licensed under CC license and available in the public domain for use.
Using a CC search or searching Wikimedia are both great ways to find images and even text that you can use on your site legally.
Absolutely… just don’t forget to leave the proper attribution to the material. And make sure you follow the “commercial”/”non-commercial” requirements, if any….
Of course. Always follow the license that a work is put under. It is also worth noting that, with CC works, you have to link to the license the work is under to complete all of the terms, something a lot of people miss.