Copyright: What you can and cannot share on social media

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With the widespread use of the internet, the amount of information available in different formats is immense and, in theory, anyone could use whatever is most attractive for their social networks, including images, music clips, videos and more but you always have to be aware of copyright.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright “is a type of protection provided by United States law (Title 17, United States Code) to creators of ‘original works of authorship,’ such as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, whether published or unpublished.” This means that all original content created is protected.

But the reality is that while the laws protecting copyright are still clear, with the rise of social media, everything now seems more confusing and it is common to see many individuals and small businesses using other coo email list people's digital content in the wrong way, violating the laws, sometimes unknowingly.

So, let's review what content is protected by copyright and what you can use or avoid.

What is protected by copyright?
The law itself is extremely clear and since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA ) was implemented in 1998, any content posted online becomes the intellectual property of its original author. This includes: music, written texts such as blogs and e-books, images and videos.

If it's not clear to you yet, this means that you cannot copy copyrighted content and claim it as your own, nor can you share copyrighted images on your social media account without giving due credit and/or paying for the rights to use them. Doing so exposes you to lawsuits and paying large sums of money.