If it is
your original work, it is copyrighted!
As the Internet is growing so
is Copyright Infringement. Plagiarism is Theft.
There are ways to protect and detect Copyright Infringement
and you can report Intellectual Property Theft to the proper
departments with a little research. Use one of our
ICLogos
to state your website is Copyrighted.All work finished and unfinished is copyrighted to the author
and protected under the law,
title 17 U.S. Code. You may not copy work,
including text and designs, of the
author and modify it slightly and call it yours without
express permission from the owner of the copyrights.
Copyright infringement is punishable under the
law and you
could receive up to $150,000 in fines per infringement. Potential
statutory damages are $30,000 or more per each incident for
federally registered copyrights.
When is something copyrighted? On
the date the Author creates original "copyrighted" work
(designs, photographs, text) and it is
printed or photographed it is copyrighted
whether finished or unfinished.
Digital Watermarking is
a one way to prove the original date the photograph was
created. Send a CD or DVD backup of your website and/or
copyrighted work in
on a CD to
copyright.gov for a legal back up for a small fee of $45,
which is a very
small price to pay for a piece of mind.
There are plenty of resources on the
Internet that explain what copyrights are and when it is
infringed upon what do you do? There are resources on
the internet that can locate plagiarism of your text and often
that trail leads to several offenses of copyright
infringement.
For instance the program
Copyscape
is a great way to detect plagiarism of your website text
material. Often this will lead to other forms of
infringement such as stolen photographs and/or stolen
copyrighted designs. You can do a
Whois
search on the infringing domain to locate their contact
information as well as the website's host provider. If
you are unable to get the owner to remove the infringing
material you can report it to the company that is hosting
their website.
This website is meant for informational
purposes and is not intended as legal advise.
|
