What does copyright protect online?
Copyright protects material commonly appearing on websites, blogs, social media platforms, cloud-based services etc., including:
- articles, blog posts, text in a PDF document and a website's source code are protected as types of literary works
- photographs, digital art, game art, maps, charts and paintings are protected as types of artistic works
- digital music scores, MIDI files, chord charts, arrangements and guitar tablatures are protected as types of musical works
- screenplays, choreography and plays are protected as types of dramatic works
- recorded sound or music in MP3, WAV, MP4, AAC, or any other formats are protected as types of sound recordings
- movies, documentaries and videos in any format are protected as types of cinematographic works
- TV broadcasts recorded in any format, (such as MP4 and AVI) and radio broadcasts recorded in any format, are protected as types of broadcasts.
A website, blog or social media platform is not protected by copyright as a whole object or single item. Instead, its individual components are protected as discrete items that fall into the categories of material noted above. For example:
- the written articles and photographs on a blog, Facebook or X (formerly Twitter) post will each be separately protected
- the text, musical works and sound recordings on a band's website will each be separately protected
- text, video and images on a museum's website will each be separately protected.