Publishing your website can be one of the most exciting
times for a business owner. After all of your hard work
and persistence, the whole world now has access to your
products or services. You have either paid hundreds of
dollars to have someone write your site content for you, or
you have put your heart and soul (not to mention hour upon
hour of hard work) into creating content of which you can
be proud. In either case, you’ve invested time
and/or money into your website copy. Now that it is out
there for the whole world to see, it may be a target for
all kinds of unscrupulous individuals.
Copyright infringement is a very common occurrence on the
World Wide Web. How do you protect yourself? And, what
can you do if someone steals your content?
It’s important for you to know that anything you have
written is copyrighted. You can register a copyright, but
you don’t need to in order for it to be illegal for
someone to copy or reproduce your work without your
permission. Any written text, painting, drawing, musical
composition, photograph or computer program, be they
published or not is protected by copyright law.
Unfortunately, just because your work is copyrighted
doesn’t mean it is safe. Some individuals
don’t know that copyright laws apply to the internet,
and others simply don’t care.
With millions of websites out there, it’s difficult
to know if your website has been targeted by thieves. A
great tool to use in the protection of your website content
is www.copyscape.com.
Simply enter your website URL and it
will scan the web for you. This is a free service, but if
you have been a frequent victim of copyright infringement,
you might want to consider their paid service, which
automatically scans the web regularly for any duplicates of
your content.
What do you do if you are one of the unfortunate victims of
copyright infringement? How can you deal with the offender
and avoid the high cost of litigation? The following are
some simple steps that you can take to ensure that the
infringer removes your material from their website.
1. Contact the offender. You can usually visit the
“contact” page of the offender’s website
to obtain their contact information. If for some reason
you can’t find their coordinates that way, you can
perform a search for “who is” to find many
sites that can provide information about the website owner
by simply entering their URL. The website owner’s
contact information should be posted here, but if not,
their website host will be and you should contact them.
Keep your first contact civil. Calling or emailing the
responsible individual with a stern, yet professional
demeanor will be much more effective than yelling or name
calling. Remember that the owner of the site isn’t
necessarily the writer, and if they are, then being nasty
may not have the desired effect and in fact may create more
problems for you in the long run.
2. Send a cease and desist order. If your initial contact
didn’t get the desired results, your next step should
be to send a cease and desist order. You do not need to
hire a lawyer to create one for you. A simple search for
“cease and desist order templates” should give
you an order that can be altered to meet your needs. Send
one copy by email and one copy by registered mail and make
it look as official as possible. Include a date by which
the material should be removed. You want the offender to
know that you mean business.
3. If action is still not taken, send a cease and desist
order to the offending party’s web host. Again, the
host information is available by performing a search for
“who is”. The majority of hosts will take
action by temporarily removing the offender’s site
until the copied material is removed.
4. The situation should be resolved at step 3, but one more
step that can be taken is to notify search engines of the
infringement. Performing a search for the
“DMCA” or “Digital Millennium Copyright
Act” policies for each search engine will provide the
information you need to contact each of them in order to
request that the offender’s website be removed.
Finally, it’s always advisable to protect yourself by
keeping records of the dates your content was placed on
your site. This ensures that the other party can be proven
wrong it they claim to have posted their content first.
Placing your website and it’s content on the internet
for the world to see is a proud moment. It’s nearly
impossible for you to be able to prevent the theft of its
content, but the next best thing is knowing what to do if
it does happen.
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Kelly Sims is a Virtual Assistant and Owner of Virtually
There VA Services. To find out more about virtual
assistance and how using a Virtual Assistant can simplify
your life and increase your profitability, visit her
website at => http://www.virtuallythereva.com . While
you’re there, don’t forget to sign up for her
free monthly newsletter providing useful information that
enhances and simplifies the lives of busy entrepreneurs.
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