Material that is posted online, whether its text, company information or even images is easily copied and used elsewhere. Its truly frightening when you begin to understand how many people don't comprehend the concept of copyright or feel its their right to re-use material for their own gain.

Image via Wikipedia

Copyright law is a confusing matter and one of the most frequently misunderstood online issues. For some reason many people believe that once something has been published online, it becomes free for anyone to use; nothing could be further from the truth. Even if a website doesn't explicitly have a copyright notice, it is likely protected by copyright law.

Despite all the confusion, every website owner can take a few simple precautions to help protect your online work. As a deterrent, place a copyright notice on each page of your website; these notices are typically placed in the footer and should contain the date as well as the name of the copyright holder. In addition, you should consider embedding copyright information in any images you use or even watermarking images, especially when they're used as a gallery.

Since lower quality images are less useful elsewhere, limit your images to the size you plan to use on the site. You might also consider using a lower dpi to make copying yours images less attractive (in addition to making pages load faster, but that's another article). Some site owners even choose to disable the right-click on their images to make saving more difficult, however, this technology is so simple to bypass, its unlikely to be worth the additional effort.

Since prevention doesn't always work, its important to prepare yourself in the event that your content or images are stolen. With every change or new article, save copies of your pages and images on a CD or other backup media filed by date in case you need to defend your claim of copyright later. If you find another site infringing on your copyright, gather information about the site owner and make copies of the infringing work. Printouts, screenshots and copies of the source can all be helpful later if a polite request to remove your work doesn't resolve the situation.

We'd love to hear how you protect your copyrights online or how you've handled theft of your material.