It's just another manic Monday at the Mozzplex. You know what that means. Legal Monday!
One of the most common problems facing anyone who publishes content online is copyright infringement. It's happened to me. It's happened to you. And it'll probably happen to this post too. (Oh, the irony!)
What can you do when your copyright is being infringed? Don't get sad. Get letter-writing mad!
There are four ways to stop someone from stealing your content. Before we dive into each of those methods, I want to preemptively address some caveats, complicating factors, and limitations of the "four methods" approach.
- Make sure the website is actually unlawfully infringing your copyright and not making "fair use" of your content. You won't make any friends if you're throwing around unfounded nastygrams and issuing unwarranted DMCA take-down notices. The people at Chillingeffects.org will certainly not be pleased. Also, there is a possibility that you could be forced to pay attorneys' fees and costs to the website if you send an improper DMCA Take-Down Notice.
- Many of the steps below are designed to take advantage of the U.S.'s Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Because this law is only enforceable within the U.S., some of the steps below will not be effective outside of the U.S.
- The effectiveness of the steps below also depends heavily on the accuracy of WhoIs information. Unfortunately, bad actors sometimes do not use accurate contact information to register their domains. Thus, some of the steps below will not be possible.
1. Contact the website owner
Always start by simply asking the website owner to remove the infringing content.
I know that this sounds naïve. In most cases the people who are scraping your site know exactly what they are doing. They are trying to make some quick cash off of your genius. Regardless, I do think it is important treat others the way you want to be treated. Thus, we have a policy at SEOmoz of notifying the website owner of the infringing content before we take any further steps. If it is an innocent infringer, then the person will take it down right away. If it’s a spam farm in Russia, then you probably won’t get any response at all.
⇒ How do I contact the website owner?
The contact information is often on the site itself. If it’s not there (another hint that you’re dealing with dark forces), then go to your preferred WhoIs service and type in the domain name. This returns all kinds of useful information for combating plagiarism. It indicates the contact information, including an email, for the site owner.
⇒ What do I do if the WhoIs information is inaccurate?
If the WhoIs information is not correct, then you can try digging for more information by using a reverse IP search. Sometimes this reveals more information than a domain search. As a last ditch effort, you can send an email to [email protected].
⇒ Can I have an example of working with WhoIs information?
Let's use SEOmoz.org as an example. Suspend your disbelief and imagine for a moment that SEOmoz has ripped off some of your content. Assume further that we didn't post our contact information on the site. You could find out whom to contact by looking up SEOmoz's WhoIs information. I like to use whois.domaintools.com, but there are other WhoIs services around.
If you looked up SEOmoz.org on Whois.domaintools.com, here is what you would see after scrolling just below the fold of the page:
As you can see, our WhoIs information indicates quite clearly that the point of contact for our site is [email protected]. If you wanted to contact SEOmoz with complaints about content, start by sending a polite but firm email to Gillian requesting SEOmoz to take the offending content down.
If this first method doesn’t work, then move on to method two. Again, don't be surprised if this step doesn't solve your problem. You should still go through the process of doing it. That’s manners, and ultimately good business.
Best Practice: If you get a response from the website owner and she is resisting removing the content, it may be worth considering whether you can turn the infringer into an affiliate. Since it’s your content that’s driving ad sales, you may convince the infringer to give you a share of the ad revenue.
If this first method doesn’t work, then move on to method two. Again, don't be surprised if this step doesn't solve your problem. You should still go through the process of doing it. That’s manners, and ultimately good business.
Best Practice: If you get a response from the website owner and she is resisting removing the content, it may be worth considering whether you can turn the infringer into an affiliate. Since it’s your content that’s driving ad sales, you may convince the infringer to give you a share of the ad revenue.
2. Send a Take-Down Notice to the Online Service Provider (“OSP”)
The next step is to contact the company hosting the site (aka the "online service provider" or "OSP") and ask it to disable the infringing site. The DMCA provides incentives for OSPs to disable infringing sites by offering them immunity from lawsuits if they respond quickly to take-down notices.
⇒ How Do I Find Out Who Is Hosting the Infringing Site?
In order to find the OSP, go back to your WhoIs results from Step One. Before you were looking for the contact information of the owner. Now you are looking for the server or who hosts the site. To find the OSP, scroll down until you see the “Server Data” box. Note: Not all WhoIs services provide this information, so don't get frustrated if you can't find it on the page. It might not be there. In our example, I've used WhoIs.domaintools.com, which usually includes information about a site's server.
For example, take a look at the server information for SEOmoz.org:
⇒ How Do I Find Out Who Is Hosting the Infringing Site?
In order to find the OSP, go back to your WhoIs results from Step One. Before you were looking for the contact information of the owner. Now you are looking for the server or who hosts the site. To find the OSP, scroll down until you see the “Server Data” box. Note: Not all WhoIs services provide this information, so don't get frustrated if you can't find it on the page. It might not be there. In our example, I've used WhoIs.domaintools.com, which usually includes information about a site's server.
For example, take a look at the server information for SEOmoz.org:
As you can see, next to IP Location, it indicates that our server is operating out of Washington and that HopOne Internet Corporation is our Server. Now that you have found out the identity of the OSP, you still need to know how to contact the OSP.
⇒ How Do I Find the Contact Information for the OSP?
Often, you can find the OSP's contact information by searching for its website and getting the information directly from the OSP's site. For example, the fine folks at HopOne.net make it extremely easy to get a hold of them to report abuse. It's on the "contact us" page under "report abuse."
However, it won't always be so easy. Let's assume for a minute that you couldn't find contact information for HopOne on its site. The DMCA has statutory incentives to encourage OSPs to register with the U.S. Copyright office. Thus, to locate the contact information for your OSP, go to the U.S. Copyright office list of designated agents for OSPs. Look on that list under the letter "H" for Hop One.
Click on the OSP's name to view a pdf of the contact information for the OSP's designated agent. HopOne's information is below:
Now you should be able to contact the OSP.
⇒ What do I say in my letter to the OSP?
Sometimes OSPs have special instructions on their websites about the information they need from you before they take action. Generally, OSPs want to know the following:
- You own the copyrighted material
- A description of the infringing material and the URL where it can be found
- You did not give the infringer permission to use the material
- You swear under penalty of perjury that all of the information contained in your letter is true and that you are acting in good faith
- Your contact information
Best Practice: Always keep a copy of your communications and make sure they are professional. They could end up being used as evidence in court.
⇒ What if the OSP is located outside of the U.S.?
If the OSP is located outside of the U.S., then it is not subject to the laws of the United States and has no legal imperative to take down the site. That is why a lot of questionable U.S. based companies (and companies that know they are going to be operating on the boundaries of fair use) select ‘off-shore’ OSPs.
Best Practice: Because it costs very little to do it and it is possible that the foreign jurisdiction will have a DMCA-like law of its own, always send a letter to the foreign OSP.
If Step 2 doesn't get you anywhere, you can still contact the domain's registrar. This brings us to Step 3.
3. Send a Take-Down Notice to the Company that Registers the URL
Many registrars also disable domains that engage in copyright infringement. Thus, once you determine who it is, you can send the registrar a DMCA Take-Down Notice as well.
⇒ How Do I Find Out Who the Domain's Registrar Is?
The registrar information is also included in the WhoIs information. For example, according to the WhoIs information for SEOmoz above, our registrar is Enom.com. From Enom's website, it is easy to find their copyright infringement policy. Enom wants essentially the same information as the server in order to suspend the infringing site's domain. Thus, you can modify your letter to serve as notice to both the hosting company and the registrar by simply addressing the notice to both parties.
If the registrar is outside of the U.S., it may not have a copyright policy. Thus, this step might not be useful.
Don't give up yet if you haven't seen results! One of the most effective remedies is still available!
If the registrar is outside of the U.S., it may not have a copyright policy. Thus, this step might not be useful.
Don't give up yet if you haven't seen results! One of the most effective remedies is still available!
4. Send a Take-Down Notice to the Search Engines
The final step is to notify the search engines of the infringing content so that they can scrub them out of their search results. Each search engine has a policy on where to send copyright infringement notices and what to put in it. Quite frankly, most people only trouble themselves with Google. You can find Google's Copyright Infringement Policy here. Yahoo's policy is here. Look for information about Live's policy here. The search engines need to know the same basic information as the server and the registrar above.
Often, given the difficulty in tracking down a server and registrar that is beholden to U.S. copyright laws, contacting Google is the most effective step towards protecting your online content.
Often, given the difficulty in tracking down a server and registrar that is beholden to U.S. copyright laws, contacting Google is the most effective step towards protecting your online content.
Conclusion
The great thing about each of the above steps is that they don’t necessarily require an attorney. However, if you’re getting some flack from any of the above parties, a strongly worded nastygram from an attorney with fancy letterhead may set things right.
Obviously, a lawsuit is last resort. Regardless, remember that you may be eligible for attorneys’ fees and statutory damages if your content was registered with the U.S. copyright office. For more information about registering your copyright, please read this post.
Once again, I thank you for your readership. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Obviously, a lawsuit is last resort. Regardless, remember that you may be eligible for attorneys’ fees and statutory damages if your content was registered with the U.S. copyright office. For more information about registering your copyright, please read this post.
Once again, I thank you for your readership. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Very truly yours,
Sarah
Good comprehensive post. I would also add that some service providers and hosts have policies whereby providing false or incorrect WHOIS info is cause for account suspension. So if your WHOIS search returns incomplete or clearly inaccurate info (i.e., non-existant street/city), you might use that as additional leverage against the domain owner.
Terrific addition Matt! Thanks!
Good read, and it's interesting to see on popular sites how little time it takes before you may have to deal with this sort of thing.
Wow! What's faster - the indexing or the scraping?
Wow, amazing... Once I posted a post yesterday, it was scraped before I finished rereading it. Am I so popular already??? LOL Or am I in scrapers' [black] white list?
Holy Copyright Infringement!
Now I've got to resort to the Take-Down Notice of Doom! Muwah ha ha.
But you got a link back :)
"Holy Copyright Infringement!"
Okay Sarah - you're officially the funniest attorney I don't know. I can see why your part of SEOmoz. It seems that you, Rebecca and Jane all share a similar sense of humor. It must be quite the fun time at work each day for you!
I was planning on writing a mini guide to tackle this issue for some people that work with me - this, once edited and adapted for the UK market, should do brilliantly.
Thanks for saving me huge amounts of time!
"Spam farm in Russia"
You know things are going bad in the US when we're even outsourcing SPAM farming.
Kidding aside, another great column Sarah.
"The effectiveness of the steps below also depends heavily on the accuracy of WhoIs information. Unfortunately, bad actors sometimes do not use accurate contact information to register their domains."
Just a quick note that there are some very legitimate reasons for not having accurate contact information on the WhoIs (i.e. SPAM), and/or not changing the WhoIS if you buy an existing site. For example, any modification of the WhoIs could potentially expose that site to an adverse PageRank impact from Google.
That's really a shame btw that Russia has this kind of reputation in the world... I wish that energy of russian hackers and spammers were spent for good...
I agree with you. It is really a problem. I am from that region, too.
However, to fight against copyright issues on the internet is really hard to solve there. They have very few laws about Internet copyrighting which are only on paper.
thank you so much,
very helpful
i print it.
Hi Sarah,
Excellent post, just the thing I was looking for when a company swiped some of my pages. I'm still in the middle of getting them to take my stuff down, but I've posted the screenshots in the meantime:
https://examplify.blogspot.com/
Thanks again for a great post.
Phil
Thanks, Sarah, for another valuable post! Great sense of humor mixed with such timely and useful information. Cheers
Wow! You can't believe how timely this is for my client. Thank you so much for the very helpful info.
Great article Sarah -- very much to the point!
I would add that in the US, even in an informal approach to a web site owner, rights owners have to be EXTREMELY careful about how a takedown request is made, because there are sanctions and money damages available under DMCA section 512(f) against the alleged rights owner, if a takedown request is made and it turns out to be unfounded. Most takedown letters being circulated on the web are not valid takedown letters under the DMCA, so this is "DIY" at your own peril. If a rights owner uses eBay's NOCI online complaint system it is just as possible to get things wrong, as right. I have a client who was threatened with a 512(f) lawsuit because he didn't properly understand a copyright doctrine when he filed his eBay NOCI. I wrote an article about the 512(f) problem (available on arborlaw.biz). The case I refer to is the Diebold case (can be found here) and the damages asssessed against Diebold for improperly using the takedown procedure were $100,000.@cbhadley, improper trademark use can be attacked in the US in a few instances. Google will allow trademark owners to complain about their trademarks being used as Adwords keywords (here). Many domain registrars and hosts have a policy to shut down registrations which contain trademarks in the domain names (GoDaddy transfers the name over to SPAM_AND_ABUSE.NAMESERVER.XXX upon validation of the accusation, for example).
It gets much trickier when one content provider is masquerading as another but not actually using the trademark -- this might or might not be something that an OSP will remove content for under a hosting or registration agreement -- usually not. Google will not do anything about search engine results which point to content which infringes trademarks -- they will only act in connection with sponsored advertising that commits trademark infringement or false advertising in the sponsored ad copy. But Sarah has it right when she says it is absolutely not a DMCA violation and a DMCA letter should not be used for trademark issues. And once you are dealing with a content provider outside of the US all bets are off.
Carol Shepherd, Attorney
Arborlaw PLC
What to do if I have around 200 articles and on google I can find that most of them are used somewhere else as well (often one articles in more than one site), even some ranking higher than my website... how to chase them? I would need whole month, 8 hours a day just to deal with them without finding any solution I guess, cause the content would be used once again on another website.
It's really sad and frustrating... you work hard... but it seems that the work goes for somebody else.
I ofen use DCMA for my blog to protect it spam and copy.
There is one thing I would like to share, some of the domain registrants allows to keep the domain's details private. So when you search, you see some random address, it may not be a proper address, something like John Doe, bla bla....
Anyway nice presentation!
i content was also stolen by some third party sites ! but now i have got an idea to deal with those stolen contents from our sites , and removing those stolen content from the party sites !
Worth able info :)
Great post and a Great topic. I recently found a few blogs that had simply copied my web content from one particular web page and pasted it directly into their blog. Fortunately, a link to my site remained intact!! I easily found them.
I also found 2 more blogs using my content word for word, but this time I used a plargarism checker to find them. (I still need to get them to remove content, anyway...)
The first blog infringing upon my copyrights: I attempted to contact them but could not find any contact info. This was a blogspot blog, mind you. So I actually posted a comment on the blog. I think I did that twice. I never got a response!
Based upon the lack of response and the fact that my content (html) and CSS Styles were all intact on this blog... even my graphics for crying out loud.... I went to Google and submitted a dmca takedown.
Google owns blogspot and that's the only info I could find in the whois. I was kind of impressed because less than 12 hours later my content on 3 pages of that blog was removed. A day later, the entire blog was removed.
I still have 4 more sites to work on. And one article where the author is listed as someone other than myself.
I have found that I have to keep an eye on the web for my content on a regular basis. So I set aside time once a month, about 5 hours, and scour the web and look at my backlinks. It's worth it.
So far we have had over 20 sites copy our authority site dictionary. In every instance, regardless of country, when the sites were contacted, the site owner has apologized and blamed their staff for thinking that ALL dictionaries online are free of copyright protection. There seems to be a general impression world-wide that as long as it is published on the Internet that the content is free for the taking.
Thanks for explaining this Sarah, I have bookmarked it and yes the Irony is that someone will probably copy your article :-( Thank you! LT
There is a grey area in copyright law, certainly here in the UK. Clearly, if somebody cuts and pastes your entire page, that's an infringement. And if they merely quote a couple of sentences, acknowedging the source, then that's ok.
But what if they use large chunks. Say, 200 or 300 words?
This has happened to me a lot, mainly webmasters pasting sections of newspaper articles I've written. Interestingly, most newspaper publishers in the UK don't seem to have the resources or the will to chase down these people (perhaps because some are advertisers).
However, I've turned this particular situation to my advantage. I mail the webmaster, politely pointing out that they are infringing my copyright (this is true, even though the article is published on the newspaper site, rather than mine), and asking for a backlink in return for my turning a blind eye.
So far, in 100% of cases, I've had a positive response, and been able to specify the anchor text that links back to my site. (It may find that I also send them a line of HTML they can insert on the page).
In this way I've managed to get some 30-odd high-ranking, relevant pages to link to my personal site, ensuring it stays at the top of Google for searches of my name. And I've not needed to resort to lawyers.
I've found the best way to monitor this type of borderline copyright infringement is to set up Google Alerts for both my name and a line of text from the article in quote marks.
Thanks for your input travelguy!
That's a very when-life-give-you-lemons-make-lemonade approach!
Great post! It made me think a bit deeper; does this apply solely for copyright infringement? What about using your registered trademark? And what if the domain is a site such as YouTube, Flickr, or similar where the user doesn’t own the domain, but an account / URL?
Is the thief really worth the time and effort? I had my content stolen recently and when I posted a post on that, many of my readers commented "you just can't stop them as they are numorous and you can't fight with everyone..."
So it seems like that once you have a popular resource and choose to fight with every thief, you risk spending most of your time doing that...
I agree--while this is extremely helpful information, it seems that it's not worth the trouble for spam/scraper sites, but I could be wrong.
You definitely have to do a cost/benefit analysis. We've all got better things to do than be a hater so you definitely want to pick your battles.
One of the major factors we take into consideration when deciding whether to take action is whether the infringer is linking back to SEOmoz or not. Obviously, we like the links so we're less likely to be bothered if we get a link back. But if it's a site that regularly scrapes from the industry, we're more likely to take action.
I find that once you get a few standard cease and desist letters, the process is much less harrowing and goes more quickly.
Thanks Ms. Smarty!
In Section 2, you have an extra period in your links to domaintools.com.
Interesting idea about trying to make the thief an affiliate. What makes you think their reporting to you would be fair/honest?
Thanks for the tip on the typo. That's corrected.
As for whether the thief will become an honest affiliate, this approach is really going to work best on the "honest infringer." You know, the guy or gal who thinks if they just put your name on the article then they're not infringing. Alot of people don't have a clear idea about how easy it is to violate copyright and once you point it out to them, they're willing to get on board.
Like so many things, having an agreement that requires full disclosure and the sharing of information is essential for keeping everyone honest.
Like so many things in business, you need to use your gut instincts and a strong disclosure clause to decide whether to work with a thief-cum-affiliate.
Thank again for your comment Mr. Clark.
Continued wonderfulness and usefulness... yum. Thanks :)
Good article. :-)
Here is a case study. Along SEOMOZ I also read Ian Laurie's website Conversation Marketing. Back in October he ran into a website that had copied section of one of his books, that he had online for free, and posted it without attribution.
Post Link: https://www.conversationmarketing.com/2007/10/plagiarism_and_stupidity.htm
The following post he talked about how to deal with plagiarism and provided further details about the situation.
https://www.conversationmarketing.com/2007/10/plagiarism_and_5_ways_to_avoid.htm
The author claims that she was given permission by someone else that permission to post it and didn't know that it was someone else's work. While this is always a possibility the attitude that she used on her own site, she was polite on Ian's site, hints to me that realitymay have been different. That or she is easily riled up.
In the end everything was resolved and I thought people might be interested in seeing a case study.
Thanks for posting these links Zegron! Real examples are always helpful.
Best Regards,
Sarah
There is one tactic I've found to be very effective. In many cases, the copyright infringer is taking your content in their quest for search engine rankings.
I've personally found that, especially in the international arena, threats from lawyers outside of the infringer's jurisdiction tend to not work so well. Everyone knows that even if it goes to court, enforcement is a serious issue.
But Google, Yahoo and MSN have one other thing in common than being search engines - they are based in the US. So the DMCA applies to them. If you think about it, search engines are a type of OSP (providing traffic and visibility) but without the contract. They are therefore much more likely to remove the infringing site from their index.
What I find works faster, cheaper and more effectively than courts and even ISP's is to also serve a notice to the search engines the infringer is currently ranking in. In practice, people online seem more afraid of Google than the courts, which is a sad commentary in and of itself that I won't get into now.
Ian
"In practice, people online seem more afraid of Google than the courts, which is a sad commentary in and of itself that I won't get into now."
That's because Google's much more powerful than the courts. :)
Thanks for your comment. I think you are exactly right about the relative effectiveness of each methods. Hitting the search engines first would be an extremely efficient way to deal with the problem.
But I'm old fashioned and like to try method 1 first. You know, give them a sporting chance to come clean. : )
Very Best Regards,
Sarah
Thanks again for these legal posts. I have a question: if I re-print a RSS feed or ATOM feed in a website, is that legal? I was under impression RSS or ATOM feeds are fair use if you put a link to the original source.
You've hit upon a million dollar question Mr. O.
The answer is "it depends." [I know I know.. Why can't things be simple FOR ONCE!?]
Most people's use of RSS or ATOM feeds would probably be considered fair use, but not always. All fair use questions are murky because the Court weighs a series of factors that I describe in more detail here.
I can say this: Just because something is published by RSS doesn't automatically make it public domain. And a link to the original source doesn't make infringing content less infringing. Linking just makes people less mad about infringing.
If you are reproducing the entire article/post on your website, that is more likely to be copyright infringement than if you were just excerpting a portion and telling your readers to click the link for the rest. Excerpts are good.
If you're criticizing the article or using it to teach students about the topic, it's less likely to be infringing. Commentary and teaching are good.
I think the best practice for RSS feeds is to re-print only a portion of the article, include a link back to the original source, and don't make too much money. The combination of these factors helps you fit more easily into the "fair use" defense and also makes people less likely to sue you. After all, the author may be fine with the infringement if he gets a link out of it. And two, if you don't have any money there is not much point in suing you.
On a final note, it is important to consult the terms of use of the originating site. Some people want their articles to be re-printed in their entirety and they give explicit permission to do so in their post. The terms of use are probably the best place to start.
Thanks again for your great question!
Sarah
"If you are reproducing the entire article/post on your website, that is more likely to be copyright infringement than if you were just excerpting a portion and telling your readers to click the link for the rest. Excerpts are good."
THAT'S what I was looking for, I frequently take excerpts from articles to illustrate a point, more often than not it is because the original author made the point better than I could, and it makes little sense to dilute it...
Speaking hypothetically, sarah, is it possible to take legal action for a 'lengthy' excerpt, or does that fall under 'fair-use' terms?
Welcome to the grey area Mr. C. I don't think you're going to like this answer, but here it is anyway.
The short answer to your question is that "yes, it's possible to take legal action for a "lengthy excerpt." However, very generally speaking, lengthy excerpts (200+ words) will sometimes be fair use.
The amount of content copied relative to the total size of the work is only one of the factors that determine whether something is fair use. You've got several others to go.
If you're using the excerpt as commentary or an illustration on a particular topic or if you are commenting on the excerpt itself, then you are more likely to be within the purview of fair use. Quotations from position papers in news reports, public addresses, and speeches are more likely to be considered fair use as well.
Also, if your use is not commercial, then you are more likely to be considered making "fair use" of the excerpt. The fair use policy is designed to further education, not to permit people to take economic advantage of another person's work. It’s better to use a small or unimportant (preferably both) piece of the work so that you are complimenting rather than supplanting the copyright holder’s product.
Another factor to consider is the "nature of the content." The more historical, biographical, or sciencey in nature, the more likely it is to be fair use. The more creative it is, the more likely it is to be infringement.
While lengthy excerpts are sometimes okay, here are some horror stories for you that demonstrate lengthy excerpts cause trouble:
In Harper & Row v Nation Enterprises, the Supreme Court found that there was copyright infringement and no fair use when a magazine copied only 300 words out of 300,000 words of President Ford's memoir. Even though this was a small amount of words relative to the whole, the Court found infringement because these words constituted "the heart of the work." [One caveat here, the memoirs had not yet been published and unpublished works are entitled to slightly more protection than published works because of the extra value associated with first publication rights.]
In Meeropol v. Nizer, the Court found that using 28 letters, a total of 1957 words, in the defendant's popular true-crime novel constituted copyright infringement and not fair use. This is true even though the letters were a very very small portion of the defendant's novel. The Court found these letters to be substantial and important despite constituting less than one percent of the novel, especially since the words were used in promotional literature advertising the book.
Also, here's an article about a case where newspapers successful convinced a Belgium Court that Google couldn't use its headlines and short snippets of text because the excerpts, while short, supplanted the newspapers' market.
The only sure way to avoid trouble with a lengthy excerpt is to get permission from the copyright holder. If you're not getting permission for lengthy excerpts, then I hope you are only using lengthy excerpts that are mostly fact-based and that you are using to make commentary in a non-profit environment.
Best Practice: (1) Use short excerpts with links and attribution OR (2) summarize the original author's content in your own words. There is no copyright on ideas so summarize to your heart's content. To reduce your risk of copyright infringement, combine summaries with very short excerpts and include attributions.
I hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Sarah
Once again, hugely useful comment (as good as many blog posts!). I really like the examples you give. The one about the Belgian court reminded me of something I was going to say when we were talking about Google's cacheing of pages possibly infringing copyright. The better their search results get, the more often the results *do* supplant the need for the original page - how often do you google a question and find the answer without actually clicking through? Happens to me from time to time.
It seems to me that copying the titles of pages in this way breaches pretty much every bit of the copyright statute - it's for commercial purposes and it supplants the need and market for the original (can't remember the exact wording).
It's not that I *want* G to be guilty of copyright infringement - I would just quite like the law to be clear...
I'm glad I'm not on the other side of a fight with you, Sarah (at least not a legal fight! - although we haven't met yet, I reckon I could take you in fisticuffs).
It's a shame scrapers are automated - I love the idea of some fool paying minimum wage offshored employees to copy websites and one of them copying your post on copyright infringement and how to deal with it!
Mr. Critchlow, friend, colleague, and frequent contributor of many interesting comments,
You're selling me short. I learned to fight on the streets of Istanbul. I then decided to formalize my training by joining a kickboxing team when I returned from abroad.
I am the humble owner of a gold medal in kickboxing.
How many gold medals do you have? <smirk>
ps. My absolute favorite scrapes are when they dress it up with some markov chaining. As if copyright law wasn't a foreign language already, this post translated "international copyright law" into "planetary papers law." You can't imagine how badly I want to add "planetary papers law" as my area of expertise on my profile!
pps. I believe you're mentioned in the babelfished post above too!
Uh oh. Now I'm scared. Please don't hurt me.
Love that link!
PS is that actually copyright infringement? If you change it so it no longer makes sense?
If the writing has been changed so that it no longer makes sense, it's not a copyright violation.
I haven't thought in detail about this, but it could be a copyright violation as a derivative work if it makes some limited sense...
Leaving copyright violations aside, it might be plenty of other things, such as a violatin of a Right to Publicity and maybe even libel.
Of course, I prefer to think of it as parody. I laughed so hard I got a stitch in my stomach when I read it. I would never think of robbing the world of such a gem. I only wish I had written something so funny.
Yeah. It's too funny to go after...
I really appreciate your first way to enforce a copyright and I believe (personally) that the same could be said of potential trademark infringements.
For example, we received a trademark infringement notice/letter last week from a company we haven't ever run into competitively, haven't ever heard of them and we had no clue they existed until this nasty little trademark infringement letter reached my office.
I would prefer to be called or personally emailed regarding an issue that somebody has with my company so we can discuss it, see if it is really even an issue, then pursue legal or official communications if that is warranted.
I am confident we are not infringing on any trademarks - but it sure would have been nice to get a phone call or email asking about how we came up with our name, who we are targeting for customers, and reasons why somebody feels we might be infringing on a trademark.
Thanks for the great post! It is very helpful and will be useful to us.
Great info. You talk about honest infringers and my question would be, how could someone not know that your content was copyrighted? Well I use to have attorneys tell me to just take the content off the other attorneys website and put it in a different design. These were attorneys!
So I can see a how someone might not know or understand the implications. I mean who really understands terms like "fair use" and if I'm not mistaken you don't even need a copyright notice on your webpages for the content to be copyrighted. Very confusing indeed.
I agree DT. It does seem strange people don't know they're infringing your copyright if they copy your page and then put your name on it.
Of course, I've had the benefit of solid legal training. I wish I could remember what my pre-law self thought of the subject.
I think perhaps a lot of the misconceptions come from school. In high school and college, students are taught not to plagiarize. Students are taught that they can avoid being accused of plagiarizing if they accredit the source.
Because the concepts of plagiarism and copyright are related, I think many people assume that the rules they learned in school apply outside of the academic realm.
Unfortunately, this is not true. Copyright law treats teachers and students differently than regular folks because one of copyright's goals is to further knowledge. Teachers and students are not infringing copyright if they quote you in an academic paper or discuss you in a class because of these special, explicit exceptions in the law.
These same people leave the school environment and no one ever tells them that the rules are different on the outside. Giving the author credit does not automatically mean you are not infringing the author's copyright.
That's one possible theory anyway as to why so many smart, educated people misunderstand basic copyright principles.
Thanks for the post, it is a very useful. If you have good raking on SERPs your content gets really good chances of being stolen (and your website design too). So knowing what you can do about is great.
Great post and thoughtful comments. Thanks!
I had one quick question - or given the challenges of IP law, perhaps a not-so quick question - how does the process differ for trademark infringement vs. copyright infringement? I've recently encountered a site that is doing both.
The short answer is that the process is different because there is no Digital Millennium Copyright Act for trademark. Thus, Online Service Providers are operating under different legal incentives to avoid trademark infringement than they are for copyright infringement.
Regardless, Step One (contacting the website owner) should always be your starting place. It helps build your case and sometimes it actually works. It’s always worth trying the simplest thing first. From there, however, the preferred methods change depending on whether the trademark infringement is in the domain name or in the content of the site.
I think you've really hit upon a great topic here. I want to cover it thoroughly and in depth so I will draft a companion piece to this post dealing with trademark instead of copyright.
Thanks for your question and a great post idea!
Darn. I was hoping it would be similar. Thanks for the reply, and I look forward to reading your next post on these issue!