An implied copyright licence arises where all the circumstances
suggest that the copyright owner
expected their copyright material to be used in the way contemplated. For example, sending a
message to a public discussion list has been compared to sending a letter to the editor of a
newsletter and, unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, it is likely that an implied licence
would exist allowing:
- other
members of the list to keep a copy of the message;
- the
message to be archived on a website;
- the
message to be forwarded to other interested parties;
- parts
of the message to be quoted elsewhere.
You may have noticed that many people claim that anything
which is published on the web is fair
game and therefore the subject of an implied licence. Although this is not the legal position,
failure
to include a copyright notice will leave open the possibility for others to claim that an implied
licence exists. The owners of web sites can easily displace such claims to implied licences by
making explicit statements on the site setting out the extent to which visitors to the sites may
copy material.
