Leigh Brown, Heather Kirby and Professor Doris R Dant, English
For many people today, the Internet and its technical components are still fairly new. While building websites has become a popular pastime, many people want to join in. The web site Heather and I have been creating offers helpful guidelines for creating a website and discusses important ethical issues regarding publishing on the web. Our home page navigation bar consists of seven menu items: Being Reliable, Maintaining Accurate Content, Getting Permissions, Linking Ethically, Registering, Copyrighting, and Being Aware of Other Issues. Each of these homepage items links to a separate page on the site. On each page we discuss, in simple terms, the basics about its topic. Each page also includes additional links for more information from other sources.
Our objective has been to offer on our site recommendations for building an ethical and legal website as well as to raise ethical awareness. We hope that through our site more Internet users will have a better idea of what’s happening with web ethics and then be able to contribute their ideas, making the Internet a cooperative medium. We wanted to clearly explain important concepts associated with making a website such as how to copyright your material, how to borrow material copyrighted by someone else, how to register a website, and other related topics. We wanted to make a simple site where any layman can relax his or her eyes and comfortably become familiar with Internet idiosyncrasies.
As our project comes to a close, we’ve found that if any expectation has been fulfilled from this project it is that Heather and I have increased our knowledge about how to make a web site (we had limited experience to begin with). Researching our project on the Internet was especially helpful since the net is the medium we needed to research. By researching through “netsurf”, we were able to add opinions about web work simply from our experience with a large variety of web sites. For example, by going through the process of obtaining permission for copyrighted material on the net we have learned ways to clarify our explanation of that concept. By actually doing what we recommend our viewers to do, we have gained a better understanding of how the procedure really works and are able to offer practical tips and address certain problems that may arise. Plus, we now know the meaning of commonly used Internet acronyms and other prevalent Internet terms. This practical information has come in handy for answering Internet question for friends and family.
Through our research, we collected interesting facts. Did you know that anything you create is automatically copyrighted the moment it’s created, no matter if you register for a copyright or not? We also found that not everything can be that easy. For example, does deep linking [linking from web site A to a page on web site B by bypassing web site B’s homepage] infringe on the rights of a copyright owner? Should the copyright owner of web site B have the right to require that all links connect only to their homepage so they can show off advertisements or get more publicity? Or, should we be able to keep the Internet a convenient way to link directly to a certain page in just seconds? Another big question people want to know is: Do you always have to get permission to use other people’s material? The Fair Use Act allows individuals to use copyrighted Internet material with certain restrictions. A small paragraph of criticism from the web used to emphasize a point in a university student’s paper is an example of what might be allowed under the Fair Use policy. But often confirmation of Fair Use coverage for a specific situation is unclear. These debated issues are significant in the development of the future net.
As I have been finishing up this project while Heather is serving an LDS mission, I’ve found that much of my success came through the help of others. Many people on the Internet are willing to help you out (in giving permission or just offering information and advice) if you ask them using customary “netiquette”.
My first failures, on the other hand, arose in my attempt at writing. In school I have been trained to write in a persuasive style and have had little experience with instructional writing. This project required that my writing become more specific and direct, and less vague. While writing this project I have repeatedly had to change my mind-set as I make the transition from writing class papers to working on this project. Instructional writing also taught me to thoroughly understand what I teach in order to explain complicated issues in simple terms. I’ve gained a great respect for simple and clear writing and quickly learned to appreciate those websites that were both informative and readable. Success in instructional writing has come slowly for me but I plan to continue striving for it.
Another success was my experience learning HTML code and how to put information onto the Internet. I found opportunity for creativity in web design and consequently identified a new favorite hobby. Being able to see your own creation by punching in an address on anyone’s Internet is quite satisfying.
The final work for our project now just includes polishing up the writing and then rendering the site onto the Internet through HTML code. We hope many may benefit from this site. A few faculty members have already shown interest in using this site for their courses. In fact, the information on our site is helpful for all people—not just BYU students. It’s for anyone who wants to be more familiar with Internet ethics and website “how to’s.” Through this project, Heather and I have learned much about the techniques and ethics involved with publishing on the web and have hopefully created a site where others can share in that knowledge. We hope this web site will help others create legal and ethical web sites avoiding embarrassment and legal difficulty. But mostly we’d be happy if more people could get snuggly acquainted with common methods used on the Internet.