Since the cost for registration is so
cheap (currently $45 in the United States), there is little to stop a corporation from taking
the necessary precautionary steps.
In the United States, a copyright lasts for the duration of the author??™s life plus 75 years for
individuals. Under work-made-for-hire laws, the length is 95 years from the first publication
or 120 years from the date of its creation, whichever is less.
Copyright infringement
Unfortunately, we live in a world of questionable scruples, where copyrighted material is
routinely (in some cases, even predictably) lifted and copied elsewhere. Copyright
infringement is not limited by any medium or scope??”often, small logos or icons are
stolen; in other cases, design templates are lifted.4 In more extreme cases, entire designs
along with huge blocks of content are copied wholesale. See Figure 12-1 for a particularly
egregious example.
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3. www.copyrightservice.co.uk
4. Panic, a software manufacturer specializing in Mac OS X utilities, has a special section dedicated
to the stunning number of icon, photo, and design infringements they have dug up across the
Internet, available here: www.
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