Copyright Law US | Copyright Internet Law

Copyright Internet Law Recap

On September 27, 2007, Search Engine Strategies published an article by Grant Crowell on copyright internet law, and what you should know as a search marketer. The article includes important tips from attorneys to protect your own copyrighted material and to respect the copyrights of others.
Basically, if you feel your copyright has been violated, fill out a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. The article tells you how to do this. The article offers the following tips to help a search engine quickly process your takedown request:

Fill out the search engine’s own form. All of the major search engines make it easy by providing an online form to fill out.
Make sure it’s copyright-related, and not some other business matter. (Search engines aren’t responsible for your online reputation issues, bad press, etc.).
Don’t be vague. Show them exactly where the infringing content is located online, provide the URLs, tell them what your copyrighted work is exactly. As an additional help, tell them what search terms it may be showing up under.
Make it clickable. Put the material in an electronic format, not a hard copy printout. Give them the WHOIS lookup information so they can figure out who owns the site. “We need to be able to click on it and find it easily.” (Even if it is offline content, send them a picture of both your original content and the infringing content. If you have a lot of them, you can send it to them in an e-mail.

It also offers these tips for properly filing a DMCA takedown notice:

Make certain you own the copyright of whatever you are filing to take down.
Be certain that it is actually an infringement, and not a fair use of your copyrighted work.
Make it easy on the online service provider (OSP). Find out what their own takedown notice requirement guidelines are. Some of them prefer information to be ordered in a certain way.
Provide a link to the offending material; include screenshots if necessary.
If you’ve registered your copyrighted material (which is highly advisable to do in advance), then attach the registration certificate.
You have to sign it under penalty of perjury. If you’re wrong and are sued, you will at the very least be responsible for attorney’s fees.
Don’t send bogus notices. Be certain that you are the author of the work, and the infringer is in clear violation. Don’t send DMCA takedown notices out just to intimidate the OSPs, your competitors, or people exercising fair use.

In addition, the article tells you how to prepare for a copyright internet law suit. It tells you how and when to register your copyrights, and how to prepare for a civil lawsuit.

It also gives several tips for search marketers to follow in respect to copyright internet law.

Register your copyrights early.
Goldman advises registering your copyright within 3 months of the original copyrighted work’s first publication. “This is the precondition for collecting attorney’s fees and statutory damages. If you’re really going to have the power of getting cash out of your copyright, you’re going to need to be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees.”
Don’t be duplicitous.
Don’t go out and attempt to enforce your rights if you’re engaging in copyright infringement yourself. Be sure to check all of your own online works to be sure they’re not derivative or duplicated from anywhere else.
Invest your time in protection and enforcement wisely.
“If you do see a potential infringement of your IP, the first thing to do is don’t freak out. It’s actually that simple. Immediately acting on moral outrage will not typically lead to a good business decision. A lot of splogs steal my own content, and I simply don’t care. Who cares if a splog is going to show up with my content on the seventh page of a search result? It’s just not worth it [to pursue]; they can have it.”
Don’t make assumptions.
“Don’t make assumptions about who’s doing the right or wrong thing. Often times when you first suspect who is the actual infringer, there’s more to the story than you may initially see. It’s sometimes possible they may have received a license to the content or have gotten permission in some way or another to do what they’re doing. Do your homework before you start shooting from the hip.”
Weigh the benefits vs. costs.
“You might be better off avoiding spending on litigation, and instead get a better edge by spending on some IP protection enforcement, or invest it in more marketing.”

Another attorney added the following preparations before filing a civil suit:

Prioritize who to go after.
“We’ve seen a lot of lawyers jump on the bandwagon of suing search engines, but you have to consider if that’s who you really want in your case. Is it that important where you have to bring it to that level? Or is this really between the advertisers, which is typically the case,” Wilcox says.
Gather evidence near the time of the incident.
Take screen shots when you first notice the infringement, since it might be hard to reproduce later. “We’ve had that issue with Google where we’ve had to send in screenshots because they would say that [the infringement] isn’t happening.
Consider using an outside source to document evidence, as a backup.
“So you have an independent, neutral party that has seen and documented the evidence.”
Are you really losing money?
“That’s the real harm sometimes, and often it’s very hard to prove and quantify. But the more you can assess all of the specific reasons, the more persuasive [your legal counsel] can be in helping you make your case,” Wilcox says.

Here are several guidelines search marketers should follow on best copyright practices:

If you are publishing multimedia, such as a podcast or video, don’t insert copyrighted material into your original piece if it doesn’t clearly follow fair use practices. One of the most common things is putting in popular copyrighted music soundtracks. A large number of people mistakenly believe that because they hear this done on radio talk shows, that it’s permissible for them to do so as well. Not so under the DMCA, which actually has stricter guidelines for fair use online than on traditional media.
If you are publishing a copyrighted piece under fair use practices, quote the source. Don’t include the piece in its entirety. You still have to add something to it yourself that is uniquely your own.
If you feel you have been unfairly penalized, you can submit a counter-notice. Find out who is the designated agent or department at the OSP, read up on their counter-notice guidelines, and submit all the required information and your complete contact information.
Keep track of all the original dates your content was published online. Do periodic backups of your Web site and save older copies in storage. Each time you do a major update to your site, register a new copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.
If you feel your content has been unfairly removed, challenge it. Sometimes search engines can be hyper-reactive to DMCA takedown notices when they come from a 800-pound gorilla of a business. If you know there are other businesses or individuals with legitimate uses who have suffered as you have, there may even be an organization willing to represent you in a class-action suit.

Please check out the entire article by clicking here. It has many tips on Copyright Internet Law: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627153

No related posts.

Posted by admin
In Uncategorized
On November 6, 2007