Bond University Library
About
Copyright
Copyright and the Web
With digitisation, copying has become very easy. Text, pictures, video, photographs, computer programmes and sound recordings can all be reduced to a string of 1's and 0's. They are easy to transmit and receive around the planet, and the copy is indistinguishable from the original. The ease of copying tends to make us forget about copyright and ownership. However, the vast resources of the internet, while often freely distributed, are protected by copyright, and should be dealt with carefully.Using Material on the WWW
If an individual or organisation has made material available on the Internet, either as ftp files, information on a WWW site, or discussion list or newsgroup archives, and if there are no stated restrictions to accessing the information, then it is reasonable to assume that there is an implied licence to make a copy for personal use, because here it can be argued that the person who put the material on the Internet would know that it would be copied, printed out, etc. If however, the material carries a notice such as "The material on this server is copyright and for the exclusive use of staff and students of the University of Colorado", then there isn't any room for doubt. A third possibility is a message of the kind often seen on e-mail messages, "I give permission for this material to be freely used for any non-commercial purpose, provided that acknowledgment of the author is made", and again, the intention is clear.
Although some countries are considering legislation which will declare both screen displays and temporary storage of information in RAM to be copies, this is not the case in Australia, where the Copyright Law Review Committee has recommended that neither of these phenomena be regarded as reproductions in a material form (copies). Downloading material to hard disk, or printing out material is, of course, making a copy.
The conditions under which you may make a copy, will depend then, on what notice appears or does not appear on the website. If it is stated that the material may be freely used, or if there is an implied licence, (i.e. no notices at all), then given the common practice of printing material from open web sites, it is reasonable to assume permission to download and print the entire document. If however, there is a copyright notice on the site, then you will have to consider what exceptions to copyright infringement apply. In any case, unless copying and distribution are specifically permitted by the website, you should confine yourself to personal use of the material; i.e. do not make multiple copies, incorporate into your own website, or republish in any form, without first obtaining permission from the website owner.