Give 3 minutes to save your ass from copyright.

Copyright concern is likely to gain great importance with the amplification of blogging phenomenon.With a few clicks of mouse you can copy, modify and share information. The problem is that majority of people just have a vague idea of the Copyright Law, which might result in illegal mistakes. Below is a simple guide you can refer as a publisher :

1. Use material under public domain: You can freely use any work that is in public domain. This includes federal government documents created before 1923 and materials created before 1977 without a copyright notice.

2. Quote something you discover interesting: Copyright Act says that short quotations for the purpose of criticism or news reporting are “fair use”. Note that the quote should take only a small portion of the material.

3. Use facts: Copyright Law protects the expression of facts and ideas.You are free to use facts and ideas reported on articles or websites.

4. Use materials that are not issue of copyright:There are many other materials that can not be safeguarded under the Copyright Law. These include names, familiar symbols, listings of contents,phrases, titles, slogans and procedures (Note that some of them might be protected by trademark).

5. Use a company name or logo on your domain:You can use a company’s name as long as your intention is not to deceive people that you speak on behalf of this company or that you are related to it in any way. This right applies to domain names. Anyone could develop a website to complain about a company, say Google, and use a domain name containing the name of company, say googlesucks.com.

6. Even if you credit the author,there is copyright infringement:You can only use copyrighted material if you have expressed permission from the author to do so (or if you make fair use of it, as mentioned above).

7. Don’t copy material even if it doesn't display a copyright message: Every published work (be it on paper or digital media) automatically gets copyright protection, whether expressed with a notice or not.

8. Don’t match Creative Commons with “free for grab”: You should check what kind of license it is using. Certain licenses will require you to credit the original author, while others will require that you release the document with modification under the same license.

9. Don’t copy material just because you are not making a commercial use:Even if you are not making a commercial use of the material you are still infringing the law if you do not have a permission from the author.

10. Don’t assume that if you remove the copyrighted material you will be out of trouble: The removal of the copyrighted material will not remove the copyright infringement at all.If the author decides to go after you,you will be in trouble all the same.

11. Don’t copy material just because you can’t find a copyright holder: The fact that a copyright holder can not be identified does not imply that the material can be freely copied. Similarly if you locate the copyright holder, email him asking permission and receive no answer back you would still be infringing the law if you use the material.