Online Copyright – How do you Protect Your Online Content ?

: Image via Wikipedia

I recently was asked by several writers if there was any way to protect content online. I said yes, but I wanted to provide additional information and clarification on the issue, because it is a big one for writers who are planning on going online with their work.

The essential answer it this. Any original information that you create, online or offline is protected by copyright. You do not need to expressly declare or claim this on your web site. Your rights to your original works of art, including your original writing, are protected by US and international law.

Note: this post provides recommendations of generally accepted Internet practices, but does not offer any form of legal advice. Please consult professional legal counsel for legal guidance, when necessary.

In this digital age, when it so easy to cut and paste, it is especially important for writers to know what is acceptable practice and what is not.

It is generally recognized that excerpts of an author’s work can be used (up to 50 words, or so), if a link to the original web site or post is also provided. It is definitely not acceptable to copy an entire post, article, etc. under any circumstances, except when explicit written permission from the author is given. If there is any question of acceptable fair use, the author should be contacted.

There is widespread lack of understanding of these basic copyrights, especially among bloggers. A great deal of illegitimate copying may be due to this ignorance.

There is also the deliberate copying of information by persons who seek to gain an advantage on the search engines, affiliate marketing, advertising, etc. There are spam blogs called spogs that try to fill their pages with links and all kinds of other harvested, not original, information.

It is not hard to spot these spogs. If you happen to visit one of these sites, you immediately have the feeling that something just isn’t right. There is usually a disconnect between the title and the information on the site. Some might add one thousand links per month, or more. Others might just look like gobbledegook.

If you have stumbled on one of these sites, it will surprise you. It is like suddenly walking into a haunted house, (since Halloweeen is coming, soon). You know something is odd, and not quite real, and it can be kind of spooky.

This is a very short-sighted search engine optimization strategy that might work only for a very limited time period. Google is not that stupid. A web site that practices these so called “black hat” tactics will ultimately not be successful.

I suppose it is called that because the sites are trying to pull off some kind of magic like the magician in a black hat. The web site will likely be put in what is called the Google “sandbox”.

This means that for all practical purposes, the site has dropped off of Google’s index. This is exactly where these types of sites belong, in the sandbox, where no one can find them.

There are a number of resources for writers on the Internet to help to protect their online efforts, and recommendations of what to do if you find your information has been copied. Some of these have been listed below.

Essentially there are three things you can do.

1) The first response should be to try to politely contact the company or individual who you feel has copied material, and ask that an excerpt only, be used with a link back to the original article.

That can be a little challenging if there is no contact information on the site. Try to get information on the owner from a Whois register All web sites on the Internet are required to provide registration information on ownership.

2) You may get information on the hosting company as well. At the very least, you should see information at the bottom of the Whois page listing the DNS servers. This is the name of the computers where the web site actually resides. Type this information into Google and it should give you the owner of the servers which is the hosting company.

Even if you cannot contact the owner(s) of the site, you can ask the hosting company to remove the copied information. The hosting company does not want to be responsible for hosting copied material and may comply if they are a respectable company.

3) In the worst case, you can file a formal DMCA/EDEC complaint with Google and ask to have their web site banned.

The easiest way to check to see if any of your material has been copied is to go to Copyscape. All you do is copy the URL of your post, and paste it into their search box.

A very helpful article from the hosting company I use and recommend, Lunarapages, (see banner above), is listed below.

Lunarpages News

Additional resources:

Lorelle on WordPress

http://www.plagiarism.org/

There are also steps that you can take to be proactive in trying to protect your online content.

These will be covered in Part II – a subsequent post on this blog.