Final answer:
The claim that copyright laws protect collaborative websites like blogs and wikis, allowing users to reuse material freely and easily, is false. Copyright laws are designed to protect original works and their authors from unauthorized reproduction or commercial use. Users must comply with copyright laws or specific licenses for material reuse.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that copyright laws protect collaborative websites like blogs and wikis, allowing users to reuse material freely and easily, is false. Copyright is meant to protect the authors of original works of authorship from unauthorized copying, especially for commercial purposes. This includes a wide range of works such as books, music, and more. Collaborative websites often require users to agree to specific terms of use that may grant certain reuse rights, but these rights are granted by the copyright owners under specific conditions, not through the copyright law itself.
Moreover, copyright protection in the United States automatically applies from the moment the original work of authorship is fixed in a tangible form. It generally lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Works contributed to collaborative websites can also be copyrighted, and the copyright typically belongs to the author(s) of the work. Joint authors have an indivisible interest in the whole work, whereas contributions to collective works are separately copyrightable. Thus, the reuse of such materials must comply with copyright laws unless an exception or specific license applies.
The Supreme Court case MGM Studios v. Grokster (2005) further established that companies distributing file-sharing software that enables copyright infringement can be held liable. Therefore, users and website administrators must be cautious not to infringe on copyrights.