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Act Now for
Your Copyright
By
Grant Crowell
In
Prevention Cures Copyright, we covered how to
protect your Web site files and gather evidence of your
copyright ownership.
Now we'll look at
how you can take all of your preparation and use it to render
online thieves powerless.
To tell if
someone has stolen your site, use the major search engines.
Start by
searching for words or phrases unique to your site, such as your
company name. This is where we catch most online thieves. They
steal our Web content without remembering to take out every
instance of our name.
Use Your
Headlines
For further
quality searches, I recommend typing the article titles and
headlines from your most popular Web pages into the search box.
For each search,
go through the first three pages of rankings. If the content
looks familiar, check the Web address (URL). If it shows a link
to a page you're not familiar with, click on it and review the
page.
Make sure you are
given full credit for any work of yours another site displays
— especially since they've done it without your permission. If
there is no reference on the page to the original author or to
your Web site, you might have a case for copyright infringement.
Review Your Log
Files
Your log files
can be helpful in finding online thieves. These statistical
reports are carried by most Web hosts and include updated
records of who links directly to your Web site.
Your Web host
will provide you password-protected access to these stats, which
you can view online and print out. I recommend that at the end
of every — every — month, you print out your stats for that
month and look through the list of Web sites linking to yours.
See which sites look unfamiliar and review those pages
individually.
Before contacting
anyone — alleged thief, Web host, ISP, their partner sites,
anyone — gather all evidence of theft first.
Make hard and
digital copies of the stolen Web page content and the source
code. Print the Web pages that were stolen and made sure the
date is contained on every page you print. Include URLs and
titles. You must have a date on the printed pages and the URLs
in the event the host or the webmaster takes down the site.
Next, view the
source code, that is, the HTML code, and print that. You can do
this by going to the Menu command and View/Source in your Web
browser. Compare the code of the offender's site with your own
to see how closely they match.
It's amazing that
people will take code without making changes. Same font
settings, same graphic bullet points, same table formats. It
happened to us.
Then make a list
of all Web pages that have the stolen items and write down what
was stolen on each page. List the content and the names of the
graphics.
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Continued...
Research the
Offender
Conduct a WHOIS
search at Network
Solutions to see who hosts the site and who is the
administrative contact.
See if the host
has an Acceptable Use Policy that speaks to copyright
infringement. This is more evidence. Print that Web page and
source code.
Before you
contact the offender, notify the following regarding the theft
of your copyrighted material:
- An attorney
(optional).
- The offender's
Web host.
- Major
newsgroups — in your industry and your offender's
industry.
- Major search
engines and directories.
It is usually not
required to bring in an attorney to handle the initial stages of
a copyright dispute, as most claims are settled early on.
However, if the alleged thief's Web site appears to have a
substantial business presence, you might wish to consult with an
attorney, preferably one specializing in intellectual property
and/or Internet law.
Then: Get the
pages removed.
Once you've done
all this, speak with the company owner or the manager of the
offending Web site. If you can't reach one of them, speak to the
webmaster. It is better to make a phone call before sending an
e-mail message so you will be more likely to catch them in a
lie.
Once they have
been discovered, they might try to avoid responsibility, pass
blame, claim that they were merely "testing" their
site, or say they were really doing this to help you. Keep them
talking but never let them off the hook.
Document and
Demand
Immediately after
ending your conversation, send a carefully worded e-mail message
or a certified, registered letter to the offender explaining the
copyright infringement.
Order the removal
of all offending material. All you need is a few pages of
evidence to send, but you will have to list every graphic image
they have used or stolen without your permission before you
contact them.
Demand that you
receive at least the following:
Agreement to have
the copyrighted materials removed; 24 to 48 hours is a
reasonable time frame.
A signed notice
— or at least an e-mail message — from the offending parties
stating they acted with impropriety; that the files have been
removed and will stay removed; that no copyrighted materials
from your Web site will ever been copied by them again under any
circumstances (or, at least, without your expressed written
consent); and that you will pursue a lawsuit against them if
they do not comply with your order or if at any time they are
found to be responsible for any damages.
Why is this
important? Because now you have acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
If these pages ever appear again without your permission, you
have the images as evidence.
Pull the Legal
Trigger
If they don't
take down the pages, remove the disputed material to your
satisfaction, or agree to your terms within 48 hours, hire an
attorney to send them a registered, certified letter. Make sure
it is on the lawyer's letterhead.
It's always best
to avoid a lawsuit — better to come to some settlement,
especially if you've suffered no significant losses. Lawsuits
can prove costly and time-consuming.
It's not up to
you to fight online thieves everywhere. The important thing is
to keep yourself and others informed about what legitimate Web
site owners can do to protect themselves so they can spend more
time running their businesses and less time worrying about who's
stealing their business.
The views of our authors don' t necessarily
reflect the views and policies of this company or its
advertisers.
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