why?
Groan. Copyright. Who wants to talk about that?
Well, lawyers and people who take your websites off their servers do, for a start.
So, ok, let's talk about copyright for a bit.
in general
Copyright laws are currently under review, both in Australia and internationally, in response to issues raised by the expansion of the internet and the web.
In particular, things like re-tweeting, sharing and mashing have put pressure on existing laws and concepts.
As a rule, when ordinary people routinely contravene laws without knowing it or even thinking about it, it's time to have a look at the laws. This is what's happening now.
dadaism again
Interestingly, many of these same issues were raised by the rise of the Dada movement a hundred years ago.
One of the most famous examples of this artistic style illustrates the point:
This piece of art was, as the name suggests, a collage made up from images cut from newspapers, magazines and other sources with a kitchen knife.
Hanna Hoch was very unlikely to have copyright in any of the images she chopped up.
Arguably, however, the assemblage of those parts into a collage gave the whole a different meaning than the sum of its parts.
And, she certainly owned the copyright in that.
So it will be interesting to see how the law evolves to reflect the changing norms of the internet, particularly the effect this debate has on the fair dealing provisions of Australian copyright law.
As an aside, if the above image reminds you of 1960's album covers, you can put that down to Eric Clapton.
Eric studied art before taking up the guitar. He was particularly interested in the Dada movement.
stuff on these pages
The copyright status of objects on this site is, I would argue, as follows:
images
Most of the images, including the grass background images on the Larry's Lawns "ggg" theme, I made on photoshop. So no problems there.
Similarly, the three images making up the parallax star field background were made by me on photoshop. They are actually a model of a galaxy as shown in a NASA image from the Hubble Telescope. But I made it from scratch. So no problem there either.
When the final version of the Larry's Lawns site is made, it will contain images from external sources. They, like the use of Hanna Hoch's artwork above, will be covered by the exemption for "education" in the fair dealings provisions.
audio
The lawn mower sound effect on the "ggg" theme is a free download from SoundJay - offered without restriction provided the sound is not downloaded or sold to a third party other than as part of a project.
The use of the Pink Floyd song on my home page and on the "dsotm" theme is a more interesting situation.
Having bought the album, I have a license to play the song on any device I choose. My friends can also listen to it being played.
Well, I choose to play it on this device and listen to it with you.
Aside from all that, its use on this site would also be covered by the exemption for education in the "fair dealings" provisions.
But if I put it on a web site and sold it to a real Larry's Lawns, then that could be a different matter.
While it seems clear, however, that its use on a real Larry's Lawns site would breach Pink Floyd's copyright, it doesn't make sense that it should be illegal. Bear with me:
After all, what's it costing Pink Floyd?
In this case, it would be actually legal to use the song on Larry's Lawns site in the USA, under their "fair use" laws.
As long as you are not trying to sell the audio track without their permission (eg "get your Floyd songs here - cheap!"), and it does not have a deleterious effect on the market for their work, then in the US, you can use it. No worries.
In fact, if you think about it, you would be giving Pink Floyd a free ad - promoting their product at no expense to themselves. Why should they have a problem with that?
That's the way the law is framed in the US, and I would argue that is the way it'll go in Australia as well, in time.