In the course of writing for a blog, it’s a good idea to check, periodically, to see how many backlinks your site has and how many pages have been indexed by the search engines. One very easy way to determine if a particular page has any referencing links is to run it through Copyscape.com. Copyscape will give you a list of pages that have any content that matches any of the content on the page you referred. Occasionally, in the course of checking those pages, you might find that some asshole has taken your webcopy and pasted it on his website, word for word, and NOT given you any kind of credit.

Don’t get me wrong. If you want to copy my work to your site, I’m okay with that—as long as you post my website links either directly in the copy or as reference links. It would also be nice if you at least ASK for permission.

But if someone were to copy my work and NOT give me credit, then I am left with only one thing to do: I must take legal action. It is my legal right as owner of that intellectual property to do so.

Legal actions consist of notifying the offending site’s ISP/webhost of the copyright infringement. And legal notice, as per the DMCA, is required to be sent, either by postal mail of fax, to the webhost/ISP, where they can then investigate the matter.

Websites are shut down for such infractions. Don’t be surprised if THIS website gets shut down (NOT articlewritingnews.com, but the scumbag’s website that you are reading this from—I’m gonna get you shut down, ass-face).

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 512, is the act used to convince the webhost that an infringement is taking place and that you want the offending site deleted or at least blocked.

The ISP’s do not want legal action taken against them because of some website they are hosting. And in the case of copyright infringement, they ARE liable. So they go to great lengths to eliminate infringements.

According to Richard Keyt, http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/cheese.htm, “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides that an ISP may be able to avoid copyright infringement liability arising from infringing content on a website hosted by the ISP for a customer if the ISP follows the procedures set forth in the DMCA.”

So, the ISP is protected from liability arising from having taken down the material in question.

[slide]

A Fun Fact...


Powered By WPFacts

Stumble it!