What You Can and Can't Copyright

We're getting closer to the time when you'll be able to register your site's copyright. We now need to go over what you can and can't lay claim to with a copyright; also how to handle employing someone else's already copyrighted material.

Remember: the writing, images, and other content that you create can be copyrighted. The raw facts that your material is derived from is not copyrightable.

It's easier to go through what you can't copyright first. Generally speaking, none of the following things can be claimed:

• titles
• names
• short phrases
• slogans
• familiar symbols or designs
• variations on already existing examples of such things

"Short phrases" — you can't copyright a name, say of a game that you've invented: only the game's rules. Such things can possibly become a trademark, but that's a different matter.

In the discussion of "why should you copyright" above, you may have noticed the phrase "moving right along". Those of us who were there will remember the television show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" in the late 1960's and 1970's. That's the first place I heard the phrase although of course it may be older than that. Anyway, it's an example of a "short phrase" that can't be copyrighted, although it is of such a nature that people certainly would use it a lot.

• works that haven't been or can't be fixed in a tangible form. Thus, an unwritten speech or the performance of a dance can't be copyrighted; but the recording of either can be. No problem: web sites are by definition fixed for our purposes.
• works that consist entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship. Examples include calendars, height and weight charts, tide tables, measures, rulers — ad infinitum. It strikes me that there's a touch of fuzziness here: if you create a calendar for the year 2789, you're almost certainly the first person to do it, but you can't copyright it. It wouldn't do you much good anyway.
• blank forms and similar things designed to record rather than convey information. That's to say, if a work consists ONLY of a form or forms, it's not copyright-able. If the form is part of a bigger work that is copyright-able then the question doesn't arise.
• ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, discoveries, etc., are not copyrightable. (Such things may be patentable.) Descriptions of those things, however, are copyrightable.

With that cleared up, we can now consider what you can copyright. Much easier: just about anything else, so long as it's original and is in a tangible form. There are eight categories listed by the Copyright Office:

• literary works
• musical works including accompanying words
• dramatic works including accompanying music
• pantomimes and choreographic works
• pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
• motion pictures and audiovisual works
• sound recordings
• architectural works.

The Copyright Office says that the categories should be viewed broadly. Computer programs, for instance, can be classed under "literary works"; maps and drawings come under "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works". Our web sites will include original text (literary), photos and artwork (pictorial, graphic), possibly sound recordings and music. None of these need any particular forcing of the categories to be eligible.

One subject which shouldn't cause us any problems is that of databases. Further along I'll discuss this briefly but for now let's proceed with our more particular subject.

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