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Intellectual Properties

© Creed Stonegate

Well, in this article, I'll tell you where you can find some great pictures from two very popular television shows, but first, something very important. I spoke last time of the corporate attempts to clean the Web of non-official sites. Well, I thought that this time, I would cover the issue from the company's point of view.

Okay, so you are Joe Business, and your large company produces a show called YOWZA. You have the rights to all pictures, sounds, etc. relating to YOWZA.

Your lawyers come to you, and tell you that little Bobby Jones has a site on the Internet about YOWZA. It's better and more popular than your lame official site, and has tons of pictures and stuff that you own the rights to. You think that the page is great yourself, and you're happy that little Bobby's page is building YOWZA a fan base. The problem is that your lawyers explain that by using the pictures and other material without permission, Bobby is in effect fighting your claim to sole ownership of the YOWZA images he uses.

You don't want to lose the rights to YOWZA, so you get your lawyers to shut down Bobby's YOWZA site. This hurts your fan base, Bobby's feelings are hurt, and there is a fan protest starting, but you had to fight for your claim, or lose it.

The preceding story was made up, but it's happening more and more every day. There are things you can do to prevent Joe Business from shutting down your site for using his stuff. The main problem is copyright, so the company will probably have less problem with a site that prominently displays copyright notices for all of their material. Don't save the pictures from the official site, and crop off the copyright 1997 Joe Business Inc., it's there for just that reason. And if your images don't have that notice on them, put it on, or mention who the copyright holder is near the image. This won't ensure a trouble free site, but it sure will help.

Now, for the image search. In the spirit of the last article, I'll cover two television shows that have a lot of sites about them. The first one is Xena, Warrior Princess. The best site I've found for Xena pictures has to be Tom's Xena Page. This guy has put a ton of work into his site, and it shows. This is a great site, and if you're looking for pictures he doesn't have, it has to be in his great links section.

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