Jane Doe surfs to a web page and sees a really nice drawing of a cat in a rose garden. Since she is making a web page with rose gardening as her theme and she also loves cats, she uses her browser's copy function to save it to her computer and for use on her new web page. If she uses it, will she be breaking the law???
Yes, quite possibly. Copyright is becoming an increasingly thorny and complex issue. Recent changes in Copyright Law now make many forms of seemingly harmless copying violations of federal and international copyright statutes. It seems prudent to mention this and provide you with some resources that you can review concerning copyright law and how it applies to cyberspace. The best advice that anyone can offer, is that if there is doubt about whether it is OK to use a text document or image, DON'T. Simply put, everything is automatically protected by copyright the moment it is created. The author or artist no longer has to display any special symbols or legal notices. The only way to be fairly sure that it is OK to reproduce a text document or graphic is if the author has included a statement specifically giving you the OK to do so. And then you must follow conditions for use that may be attached.
Please go to
http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html and read 10
Myths about Copyright