links, jpegs, etc

[snow]

hey, I decided I'd build a personal site on a whim the other day-- I mean everyone and their grandma has one now. I've got the coding stuff down, I mean it's not expert or anything, but it'll do. What I'm wondering is legal stuff.

Is it technically (I know no one's going to check my podunct site) copyright infringement to use other people's-- say yahoo-- jpeg's, gif's, etc. on your site. I'm Especially wondering if it actually says "Yahoo" on it.

Oh, and one more thing, everyonce in awhile I see "Link us to your site" on some pages. I thought the public had free reign on links-- or is just that some fancy javascript they'd like to provide for use. Thanx a lot.

snow

[DrZaius]

Yes, you shouldn't use images on your site unless you have permission. And you definately shouldn't use it if it has Yahoo!'s (or any other copyright) logo on it.

Also, you can link to any site you want, the "Links us to your site" probably just has some example code or a button you can use to link to their site.

[snow]

thanx, how do I know what's copyrighted execepted for the signature "r", I mean it gets sorta confusing w/ the linux penguin, it's free software, it's open source, but it may or may not be copyrighted

[snow]

hey, I thought I'd pull this back up to the top-- I have the same question though how do you know what's registered and what's not With the exception of the "r" is it just common sense? thanx

nate

[doctorgonzo]

Copyright law covers just about everything whether it has been marked as © or ® or anything. Once you author something, whatever it is, it is protected. However, monetary awards are limited unless people go through additional steps in the copyright process. Bottom line is that you should always ask about everything that is not yours, to be safest and to follow the law.

If it's not yours, you need permission to use it. Pretty simple.