A class action lawsuit has been certified against an obituary website, Afterlife, after the website allegedly copied obituaries and photographs without authorization from the authors. The obituaries and photographs were allegedly copied from other online sources, such as funeral homes and newspapers.

In Canada, any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work of skill and judgement is protected by copyright. Posting a work online does not itself waive copyright in that work. Accordingly, any unauthorized reproduction of a work subject to copyright, even if that work has been posted online, may infringe the copyright in that work.

Read more about the certification here, and one man’s story here.