Top Tips for Avoiding Copyright Issues When Designing Websites
For many people needing to give their business a competitive edge, setting up a visually appealing website to showcase the best of your skills and services is a must. But people who think about any potential copyright issues as a comparison to this is minimal. There’s no denying that copyrighting in general is a bit of a grey area; the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t is often confusing. Despite all this, there are some simple tips you can follow to ensure you get it right first time – and don’t end up in a sticky situation as a result. These tips don’t require you to have a deeper understanding of the confusing copyright infringement jargon. Ensuring you have suitable insurance for web designers is also important to protect against any unforeseen claims.
Image Source: Shutterstock
When is copyright actually copyright?
Amongst the confusing terminology of copyright, there lies one core question everybody wants to know the answer to – when is something actually classed as copyright? Well the answer is a pretty simple one, the moment an original image or piece of content is created it is in fact automatically copyrighted. Despite common misconceptions, you don’t need to file for copyright or go through any long, drawn out processes.
Domain name
Choosing a domain name that reflects the business or encompasses what you’re trying to say about the product or service is important. But special care needs to be taken to ensure there’s no danger of copyright infringement; nowadays you can’t be too careful. It’s definitely not an easy thing to choose a name that’s non-infringing – most names have already been taken, so you need to be extra creative when coming up with your name.
Images
Where possible, try not to take images from the internet. Almost all of images that can be found through a search engine or similar have some kind of copyright attached to them. So coming up with fresh designs and content is really important. Try creating your own media from scratch to avoid any confusion over what is copyrighted and what isn’t – always assume that the images you find are in fact copyrighted.
Content
Be certain the content you’re writing for the site is completely your own. Don’t try and emulate previous articles you’ve seen that are in relation to the content you’re writing for. The guidelines for developing web content are similar to images – the work needs to be truly original. Unless there is writing that mentions are particular person or company, there should be a back link in the content to credit them.
