Copyright guidelines
In the last decade, actually since the Internet got so massively popular, mainly because of the World Wide Web, the whole world had to rethink the complete behavior on the Net. What was tolerated and ignored in the nineties of the last century is now a completely written out law with all bylaws and small printed sub paragraphs.
The most talked about law regulations that concern the Internet and every user, provider and lawyer is the copyright. Ever since the very publicized Napster case, where sharing of music over the Internet was outlawed and the term copyright infringement became a part of the popular culture, Internet users have trouble discerning what is okay and what not.
Therefore, plenty of sites can be found providing interested individuals with copyright guidelines. If you are building your own web page, there are, besides regular legal concerns, copyright concerns that need to be addressed. For instance, if you don't put terms of use, clearly defining copyright issues, if you don't have somewhere the "all rights reserved" term and if you don't explicitly say that all content is copyright protected, you may have trouble suing people who rip off your page. Besides that, all pictures must have permission to use, as well as the photographer and/or copyright holder noted.
If you have writers creating content for your web page, you will have to ask them for permission to use the written text, or have at least an agreement stating that they were "work for hire" writers, whereby you have to clearly define the credits.
To obtain pertinent information regarding the copyright guidelines, you should consult the relevant web page of the copyright office in your country of origin, as well as the country where your page will be hosted. A good start provides the United States Copyright Office's official web site on the net, as well as the UNESCO web site with all possible links to every country's own legislative information pertaining to the copyright issues.
To make things really simple, try to search by using an Internet search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. Ask.com provides the possibility to ask real questions and get answers, as does answers.com. There are seventy million hits, if you Google for copyright guidelines.
Many of these provide really good advice, some are less understandable, some are made by Universities, but all of them provide information, plenty of information. All you have to do is sift through the vast offer and pick all the applicable data which will help you with your task.
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