🚀 go-pugleaf

nemo@ctr.columbia.edu (Nemo Semret) writes:
>I was wondering, who owns the copyright for WWW homepages? Is it the
>institution which owns the machines (in my case the university) or the
>author of the content?

I've not studied law, but most countries seem to hold the following 
position: Every original work is the immediate property of its author, 
regardless of the form or media it is published in. The author has, 
however, the right to grant his property to everybody he wants (usually 
by explicit contract). Since you do not have a contract with your 
university stating that all works you put on their harddisks are theirs,
I guess you own your stuff.

However, the situation could be different if you work for this 
university and creating your homepage can somehow be cosidered part of 
your duties. :-)

By the way, if you put your pages on the Web, you grant the world the 
right to read them, but not anything more. In most cases, the law is 
probably the same as if you print your own manuscript and give it to 
somebody. (It doesn't really matter who was the owner of the paper, 
although you should not take it from your university without consent. 
But then, by accepting this behavior over a longer period of time, an
institution almost directly expresses its consent with putting personal
homepages on its harddisks.)

Maybe somebody more adequately educated can comment if I got something 
wrong?

Wolfram Clauss * wclauss@saul.cis.upenn.edu * University of Pennsylvania