CHAPTER 25. COPYRIGHT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 241
text.)
Exam Question 353(p.357): What is a Derivative Work?
Acceptable Answer:It is taking major elements of someone else’s copy-
righted work and using them in a new work.
For example, cropping a picture, or recoloring a picture, or inserting a new
face into a picture, would all be examples of creating a derivative work.
If you rewrite part of another author’s text, you have created a derivative
work.
If you read their text, figure out the main idea, and then rewrite it totally
in your own words, you are safe. It is not a derivative work.
25.1.3 It Is Easy To Catch Violations
With search engines like Google, you know that computers are constantly
“crawling” the World-Wide Web looking at content including text and me-
dia.
Duplicated content is quickly noticed. Content owners can subscribe to
services that watch for unexpected copies of their work.
Content owners can (and do) use services that automatically send take-down
notices.
The bottom line here is that if you copy someone’s webpage, you might
have your whole website vanish because of a take-down request. See section
25.1.4 (page 241) for more.
Or you might just get a nice email message containing a thinly veiled threat
of a take-down notice, but giving you time to fix it yourself first.
25.1.4 DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act
In the USA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains an
important provision called the Safe Harbor. This is to protect web con-
tent providers. If a copyright holder claims that a website violates their
copyright, they can file a take-down notice with the provider.
If the provider takes down the material that is claimed to violate copyright,
they are safe from legal threats. If not, they may face legal action.