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It's the next big legal frontier. Now that everyone can steal everything and publish it online, the copyright lines appear to be blurring. But the rules, really, have not changed. Stealing is still stealing, even when it's easier.

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People frequently write to me asking if they can copy stuff off my web site. Why not? It’s just floating there in cyber space. I write back politely noting that most of the 3,000 original online pages I’ve produced in the last seven years are copyrighted and available for resale. Pay for it? Jeez, no, they usually say. We really love your articles and photographs, but we don’t want to pay to re-use it. I just got off the phone with The Boston Globe where an editor wanted to "borrow" a photograph of mine to illustrate a newspaper story. Money? Sorry, but no funds are currently available.

And those are the nice people. The rest of the planet simply donwloads whatever meets their fancy. I’ve seen my work reproduced illegally on other web sites, printed and passed out at tourist centers and even stuck on T-shirts. I once read an interview with myself in one of those ritzy airline in-flight magazines. The author had simply copped the material off the Web and revised it to look like we had a conversation.

When copyright laws were forged nobody dreamed of the Internet. Now millions of people sitting in their homes or offices can precisely duplicate an illustration or photo or song or video or an entire book by simply right-clicking a plastic mouse button. It is not illegal to make a single copy of something for your own use. It is illegal, in most cases, to send, to alter, reproduce, broadcast, duplicate or publish, give away or sell that creative work. Clicking a copyrighted image off the Web to make Christmas cards is as criminal as shoplifting. And like shoplifting, most people never get caught.

Writers, illustrators, photographers and musicians sell the rights to their work. The lucky ones sell their creative work again and again. When you buy a song or a poem, you own only the right to enjoy it – not reproduce it.

Today everyone who posts data online, or uses a Xerox machine or sends the same email to a list of friends is a publisher. If you scan something you didn’t create or even take a digital picture of it, you should read up on copyright legislation. Ignorance of the law is no defense in court. If Gramma emails you an article she got from the New York Times web site and you hand out copies at the office, you could both end up in the pokey – theoretically.

You have some rights. A copyright principle called "fair use" allows you to include bits of a published work in your own, as long as it is attributed. You can parody Star Trek or Barny legally without permission, as long as your parody doesn’t maliciously damage the owners of the original. That gray area is left up lawyers, judges and juries.

Most of my problems don’t come from professional publishers. They whine and cry poverty, but that’s always been the case. Reputable publications will always pay for work they want. I once got $1,000 from a British newspaper for recycled images they found on my web site. The real problem comes from scan collectors and small time web site owners who simply don’t know that copyright rules apply to them. I recently emailed a dozen web sites asking them to either pay for articles cribbed from my web sites or take the material offline.

"What’s your problem, buddy?" one wrote back. "I included your copyright notice, didn’t I?"

The poor slob assumed that he could steal anything that was copyrighted, as long as he reproduced the author’s name and ownership info.

To be honest, we web site editors get confused too. I know enough not to steal a new photograph from another web site, but what about old pictures, like an early engraving of the Isles of Shoals? If the item was published in the 19^th century and is in the "public domain" – isn’t it free of copyright restriction? Well, maybe. Some early images, like famous paintings, may be copyrighted by the person who owns the original. And even if an item is in the public domain, the person who copied it owns the copy. Web site owners are increasingly warning readers that they may not download any scanned images. There is even a move afoot to make linking to another web site, which is a low-end form of copying, illegal. That would quickly put an end to the search engine business. It would also be like putting up a 10 mph speed limit on the Information Superhighway.

THE UP SHOT

Copyright law was confusing enough before the digital age. At least, back then, it was often possible to tell the original from the duplicate. In the digital world, the copy and the original are identical, and there are those who predict that giving everyone on Earth the power to steal will turn us all into criminals and make copyright law unenforceable.

But until that time comes, everyone needs to bone up on the basics. The basic rule is – don’t transmit or display anything unless you know who created it and you have that person’s permission. Even an unpublished creative work is protected by copyright law for the author’s life plus 70 years. If you buy someone’s diary on eBay and publish it, that person’s heirs can sue you – unless the writer died before 1933. If, on the other hand, the author is anonymous, then you can publish his or her work if it was created before 1883. Now you see why copyright law is among the hottest new legal fields.

Generally any work published before 1923 is in the public domain. That means you can pretty safely reprint books or record songs or sell T-shirts from creative work published during World War I, but not from the World War II era. After 1923, the copyright rules protecting published work get confusing. Blame Mickey Mouse for that. When the powerful Disney corporation realized that Mickey was going to become a publicly owned image in 2003, they lobbied hard for revised copyright laws. That was back in 1999 and, since American politicians ultimately work for the rich, Mickey, Donald, Pluto and the gang were granted another 20 years of protection by law. In doing so, however, Disney blocked the public from 20 years worth of other creative work that was about to be released for all our use. The rewritten copyright laws are an odious mish-mash that makes the online copyright problem worse.

The loophole, as I understand it, has to do with whom – after 1923 – bothered to officially copyright their creative work. Disney did, of course, so they get 20 more years. That means that creative stuff published between 1923 and 1978 by people who didn’t register their copyright with the government, might actually be in the public domain. Between 1978 and 1989 you didn’t have to officially register your published work, but only had to indicate that it was copyrighted or mark it with the symbol ©. To make matters more confusing, today you no longer have to mark or register your work since new legislation protects you anyway. Anything published after March 1, 1989 is automatically copyrighted for 70 years after the death of the author, or if it was created by a corporation – as Mickey was – for 120 years from the date the work appeared.

It gets worse. Back when people were required to register a creative work with the feds, it could also be renewed. Not only is there a pile of unregistered work out there, but there is stuff that was copyrighted once, but then not renewed. As I read it, that means you may be able to copyright work that you didn’t create as long as it falls in between 1923 and 1978 and was not issued with a copyright notice. You can then sue someone for infringing on your ownership of something you didn’t create in the first place. God bless America.

THE WEB SITE MAKERS

Copyright law reminds me of high school Algebra. The more I study it, the less I understand. Last week I was scanning a "stock photo" web site that sells old images. You can download their scans for as little as $5 for private use or $100 for print use. Among the files was a series of photos of Portsmouth taken in the 1940s that I know Bill Gates says he owns. Gates and his web site Corbis.com have been buying up online rights to old images so that the rest of us will have to pay through the nose for access to our own heritage. I found another stock image, the original of which I know for certain is lying in a flat file at the Portsmouth Library. I wrote to the owners of the stock company asking for an interview for this column. I wanted to understand how they determined that they have the right to sell thousands of images that were mostly scanned from old postcards and books. They never wrote back.

It’s going to get ugly out there, people -- and this time everyone is on the copyright frontline. Here are a few web sites that may ease, or increase, your confusion.

THE US COPYRIGHT OFFICE
Go right to source and ask the horse.

US COPYRIGHT LAW
Chapter and verse for the brave.

THE COPYRIGHT WEB SITE
Start here. This one is fun and readable.

THE ERIC ELDRED ACT
These are the people who are attacking Disney’s public domain decision.

WHEN WORKS PASS INTO PUBLIC DOMAIN
A great chart for determining what is and isn’t

TEN BIG MYTHS ABOUT COPYRIGHT
Another readable start-up reference by an expert

COPYRIGHT ON THE INTERNET
From NH’s own Franklin Pierce College

THE MOUSE THAT ATE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Mickey and Goofy take over Congress