Copyright law differs around the world, and thereby around the World Wide Web. It is best practice to always ask permission before using another's work. According to the United States Copyright Office, any original work of authorship is protected (including poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture); but copyright does not protect intangible concepts, such as facts, ideas, or methods of operation.
Your work is protected by copyright the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form (i.e.: published, printed, or uploaded to the web). Rights grants under copyright law include:
the right to reproduce the work
the right to prepare derivative works
the right to distribute copies of the work
the right to perform the work
the right to display the work
You cannot collect damages in court for copyright infringement unless you have officially registered (and paid a fee) with the U.S. Copyright Office.
You can require other sites to take down the infringing work.
It is highly recommended, but not required, that you specify copyright directly on your work. This may be done through a watermark or alt text in an image. It can also be in the comments of your source code. A copyright notice (the copyright symbol, year, and name of the owner) may be found in the footer of a website. You can also create a type of legal page for more information:
Privacy Policies are used by any website that collects information from their customers. They should cover the use of cookies and trackers, personal information collected, and contact information to erase private data.
Terms and Conditions of Use are best for websites with user-submitted content, such as a blog, forum, or pages with comments allowed. These explain what actions are permitted, how to credit others' content, and why content might be removed.
Disclaimers are necessary for user-submitted content that is not moderated by the website owners, or when there are many links to external pages.
Complaints and Feedback pages offer users the chance to report any issues, including copyright infringement.
Patents, Trademarks, and other policies should be listed for a website or company whenever relevant.
Kyrnin, Jennifer. (2016, February 6). Legal Pages for websites. About.com. Retrieved from https://webdesign.about.com/od/legal/qt/legal-pages-for-websites.htm.
Attribution Only / CC BY 
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Attribution-ShareAlike / CC BY-SA 
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
Attribution-NoDerivs / CC BY-ND 
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution-NonCommercial / CC BY-NC 
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike / CC BY-NC-SA 
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs / CC BY-NC-ND 
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
Use of a work without permission is permitted in very limited circumstances (such as nonprofit and educational), and depends on the following factors:
In general, web designers should not count on fair use to avoid copyright violations. If the owner asks for the content be taken down, then you must do so immediately.
Open source code can be made publicly available, with a license that allows anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the work, but only if it is released under the same license. For example, a WordPress template will be available under a General Public License (GPL). If you copy and edit one of their themes, the new one must also be available under a GPL, and cannot receive additional restrictions.
Works in the public domain are not protected by copyright, and can be used by anyone without permission. Typically, a work is not protected if:
Public domain is less certain when several works have been added to a collection in a book or on a website.
No matter the copyright status, always give credit for work that you did not create.
By the National Association of REALTORS
