Do Copyright Laws Protect Your Content?
Today I’m going to talk about copyright protection for the content that you have published on the Internet. This was prompted by a phone call that I got from one of my subscribers.
Please understand from the beginning that I am not a copyright law attorney or any other sort of law attorney for that matter, so please keep in mind that I am not qualified to give legal advice. All I am qualified to do is pass on some information that I found from my research, most of which came from the http://www.copyright.gov – U.S. Copyright Office and some from my years of experience on the Internet.
What I am going to be covering is U.S. Copyright Laws. The U.S. has made copyright agreements with many countries globally, but not all. You can download International Copyright Relations free of charge.
Here are some copyright tips for a better understanding of the U.S. Copyright laws.
1. Many people are under the misconception that that unless a piece of work is accompanied by the copyright symbol © (the “c” within a circle), it doesn’t have copyright protection.
The law states that any “intellectual property” that you have created in any form is automatically protected by copyright law. If you write an e-book
2. The U.S. Copyright Office also states that copyright protection is NOT available for “ideas, methods, systems, concepts, and layouts; individual words and short phrases; individual unadorned facts; and the selection and ordering of data in a database where the collection and arrangement of the material is a mechanical task only, and represents no original authorship; e.g., merely transferring data from hard copy to computer
3. If you are to use anothers work that you have found through research, and rewrite the material, it is called derivitive work. In order for the new material to be copyrightable, a derivative work must be completely different from the original to be considered a new piece of work. In other words, it must be completely rewritten and changed to contain a substantial amount of original material. The U.S. Copyright Office does not specify any percentage of change, just “substantial change”.
It DOES specify that making small changes or additions to a preexisting work will not qualify the new work to be an original piece of work for copyright purposes. Correcting spelling, moving words around, or rearranging paragraphs, does NOT constitute a new piece of work. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, words, and format, for example, are not copyrightable. Keep in mind; however, that you cannot claim copyright to another’s work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have received permission from the owner. DupeFree Pro is a free tool that can help you with this.
4. According to Section 101 of the copyright law, if you hire a ghostwriter to write some material for you, you as the employer, and not the employee, is considered to be the author of the material. However, it must be written into a contract that is signed by both parties, that you own the rights to the “intellectual property”, as it was a work for hire. Only then can you claim ownership with copyright to that material.
5. There is an exception to the prohibition against reusing the work of others. The U.S. Copyright Office states that, “According to the fair use doctine of the U.S. copyright statue, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports”.
6. If your printed material has not been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, you can only take legal action against copyright infringement under these conditions:
The material must include three elements. Your copy must contain “the symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright”, or the abbreviation “Copr.”; the year of first publication of the work; and the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner.” These three elements should be on any visible copy. If you as the author wishes to place notice on an unpublished copy, it should be done as this example: Unpublished work © 2009 Your Name
7. What it boils down to is this. If you have not registered your copy with the U.S. Copyright Office, you will need to be able to prove you are the original author if you wish to file an infringement law suit.
Note: There is no such thing as the “poor man’s copyright”.
The poor man’s copyright is the practice of mailing yourself a copy of your own work in order to use the post mark date as proof of copyright. This is a long standing myth and will not hold up in court.
For more information, download this free PDF report on Basic Copyright Laws
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What Can You Do If Your Copyright Has Been Infringed?
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If you catch someone plagerising your works, first you need to collect copies of all of the evidence to support your case, if necessary. If your work has not been registered, get it registered immediately. You can get the information to register your work at http://www.copyright.gov
Next send a cease-and-desist email to the site owner. Nicely, but firmly, request that they either remove your work from their website, or give you the credit for it. If you can’t find the contact information on the site, do a “whois” search for the information. Usually, but not always, when you contact someone letting them know “you’re busted”, it is enough to take care of the situation.
If you don’t get a response, and they don’t comply with your request, contact the persons web hosting service. Often the web hosting company will remove the web pages in question and reprimand the web site owner, as long as you have the proof as back up.
I once had to report a guy to EzineArticles.com for using one of my articles as his own. He hadn’t even made an attempt to rewrite it. It was copied word for word with his name added as the author. EzineArticles removed the article from their site and closed his account.
If you still haven’t gotten any action or response after one week, give the person the benefit of the doubt (i.e. they’re one vacation, computer crash, physical illness or injury) and send one more email. If there is still no response, consult an attorney. Have the attorney send a letter to the person, with a copy of the letter sent to the person’s web hosting service, and then have the attorney file a civil lawsuit in federal district court.
If your work was registered prior to the infringement, or within three months of publication, you might be entitled to receive some money for statutory damages, and the recovery of attorney’s fees may be available. In cases of “willful infringement for profit”, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation.
Here’s a link to a sample cease-and-desist letter:
This sample cease and desist letter may not be copied , but will give you an idea of how your letter could be worded.
I hope you have found this information helpful, and I also hope you never have to use it. Involving an attorney over an infringement case can be very unpleasant and messy.
If you haven’t already downloaded DupeFree Pro, download it now for free. Use it to avoid ever finding yourself in this type of situation. By using DupeFree Pro to compare your work against the original content, before publishing, will save you from the headache of being sued and you will never again have to worry about publishing duplicate content.
Aloha,
June
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