The world-wide ease of web publishing has left a lot of copyright and trademark law completely trashed. Anybody with a scanner and an ISP can post Playboy pictures; anybody with an attitude can do whatever they want until they are tracked down and challenged. In many cases, it's easier to just leave things alone, as the fight generally just brings more publicity to the offending site.

On a more benign level, there's a whole category of fan sites that rip off CD cover art and magazine pictures and God knows how many sites violate the use of licensed sports trademarks. The question of how they get away with it is closely tied to why they get away with it.

Which is where this primer comes in.

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The clearest way for me to offer a web usage primer is to use a personal story as a test case; not because it's my story, but because it outlines all the useful general principles.

So suppose that after three years of highly public work, you no longer have the option of reprinting something with permission. Suppose it was flat-out permission denied, permission denied forever.

We'll leave aside the question of why any ex-boss would ever do such a thing, and just assert it as fact. Absolute control has been asserted. What do you do?

In my case, I was glad some ex-girlfriends were lawyers.

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Here's a failing on many a website -- acknowledging a trademark or a copyright does not give you permission to use the copyright materials. As an aspiring author, you are flat ripping me off if you give away my novel for free, and the fact that you give me credit is small consolation.

The code on when you can use something without permission is pretty straightforward, but I'm not a lawyer and this is not a law journal, so I'll apologize for the over-simplifications in advance.