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Understanding Copyrights

Original content on the Internet can be viewed by millions of people all around the world. When you share your content on your Jimdo site, you can reach a tremendous amount of people. There are some legal risks and responsibilities that come along with this power. 


What this means for you, the website builder:

 

  1. Content you find on the Internet is most likely copyrighted, belongs to someone else, and cannot be used on your website unless you get permission beforehand.
  2. You should take steps to protect your own original content if you don't want other people to use it without your permission. 

 

Finding content on the Internet that you can use.

Creative Commons enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining other rights through a variety of licensing. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information. There are several different licenses which can be chosen:

 

  • Attribution means someone may copy, distribute, display, and/or perform a copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but have to give credit to the copyright holder.
  • Noncommercial means someone may copy, distribute, display, and/or perform a work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.
  • No Derivative Works means someone may copy, distribute, display, and/or perform only verbatim copies of a work, not derivative works based upon it.
  • Share Alike means someone may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs a work.

 

Hint:

If you are looking for images to use on your website, check out our extensive list of free image resources.

Protecting your original content.

General Content

Start by adding a copyright notice to the footer of your website so that it shows up on every page. To do this, log in to your website and then click Settings > General > Footer.

 

The proper format for copyright statements is this: 

 

Copyright [dates] by [author/owner]

 

Original Artwork

If you are posting original photos or other artwork to your website, you can protect them with a watermark.

 

Some online services allow you to watermark your photos easily, and a lot of them are free. Here are couple:

 

picmarkr.com
watermark-images.com

 

Watermarking your pictures is by far the safest way to ensure that your pictures are not downloaded and posted on another person's website without permission. 

 

Find more information.

If you want to learn more about copyright, how to protect your content, or how to track when people post content you created, check out these helpful articles: