Tag: copyright blog

  • What to do if You’re Accused of Copyright Infringement

    Watch it or lose it - thieves at work by Tristan Schmurr from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
    Watch it or lose it – thieves at work by Tristan Schmurr from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    The owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to control where their work is copied, displayed, and distributed. If they think that someone is using their work without permission, there’s a good chance they’re going to react. They may be passive aggressive and write a blog post about you. They might b direct and send you an email or call you. If they sell their work for a living, they may just send you a bill. They may also hire a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter, a DMCA takedown notice to your webhost, or they may just sue you.

    If you are accused of violating someone’s copyright, the first thing you want to do is examine the situation. What are they claiming is on your site or your materials that belongs to them? Some people will tell you that you can use anything you find on the internet as long as you provide and attribution and a link to the original – and that’s just not true. What you may have done is commit infringement and admit it. So look at the image or text in question and try to determine where it came from. If you created it from scratch, there’s a good chance it’s not infringement. If you got it from someone else, you may have a problem.

    In most cases, it’s a good idea to schedule an appointment with your copyright lawyer if you’re accused of committing infringement, especially if the other side contacted you through their lawyer. He/she can examine the situation, explain your options, and help you choose the right course of action for your situation. In most cases, the person who claims you stole their work doesn’t want to sue you. They likely want you to stop using their material, and possibly pay a licensing fee for the time you used it. In many cases you want to respond either as yourself or through your lawyer with what you did or could do to resolve the situation.

    There are times where you might want to risk not responding. Some people do this is they think nothing will happen if they ignore the notice from the person claiming you stole their work. Sometimes this is effective. Sometimes it leads the person to escalate and sue you or report your company to a regulatory body that oversees your company. It’s not a decision to make lightly.

    So what are the best and worse-case scenarios in these situations? In the best-case scenario, the person making the claim against you is wrong because you haven’t violated their copyright sending a response to that end or ignoring them will resolve the situation. In the worst-case scenario, you’ll be sued (and lose!) for willfully stealing someone’s copyright and sued for $150,000 per image or article you stole, plus the copyright holder’s attorney’s fees.

    Legal Side of Blogging Book CoverBecause the penalties can be so high, you want to be careful when you use other people’s content on your website or marketing materials. You need to be sure that you own or have permission to use content created by third parties.

    If you need a legal resource on this topic or anything related to the laws that apply to social media, I recommend my book, The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed. It covers a lot of the major issues that apply to copyright and the internet. If you want to chat more about this topic, feel free to connect with me on TwitterFacebookYouTubeLinkedIn, or you can email me.

    Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.

  • FAQs about the Legalities of Social Media

    Carter Law Firm's Official Postcard - let me know if you want me to send you one.
    Carter Law Firm’s Official Postcard – Let me know if you want me to send you one.

    I had the pleasure of speaking at the Public Relations Society of America’s Western District Conference last weekend. I led two sessions: “So you want to do a flash mob” and “The Legal Side of Blogging: 10 Questions to Ask Before you Hit ‘Publish.’” Both sessions were great and I wanted to share some of the frequent questions I get when I talk about the legalities of social media.

    What should you do if you’re outsourcing your blog content?
    You need a kick ass contract that clearly states who owns the copyright in the content that is created. If the hiring company obtains copyright, does the blogger get permission to put a copy of the work in their portfolio to obtain other work? The contract should also state who is responsible if there are any problems related to the work (i.e., copyright infringement claim) or if there are any disputes related to the contract.

    What should you do if you want to use a photo from a company’s site, such as if want to write a positive review of their company?
    There’s a chance that using the photo could qualify as fair use; however it’s probably best to avoid the possibility of being hit with a copyright infringement claim by asking the company if you can use their photo. You never know who owns the rights to an image and if there are any restrictions related to using it.

    What’s the worst case scenario if you use an image from Google Images without verifying that it was available for use with a Creative Commons license or had been released to public domain?
    You could be sued for tens of thousands of dollars for copyright infringement. I always say that just because someone sues you that it doesn’t mean they’re going to win, but in this case, they might. You can still be sued and lose even if you didn’t mean any harm.

    I get permission to use every photo on my blogs or use photos that are available under Creative Commons licenses that allow me to modify and commercialize each image.

    What if you’ve been using Google Images or you haven’t kept track of what images you’re allowed to use?
    Probably no one wants to hear this, but I’d rip every image out of your site and start over, making sure that you own or have permission to use every image on your site.

    These are my rules of thumb when it comes to social media:

    • Assume everything you post online will be seen by your best friend, your worst enemy, your boss, and your mother. If you’re not ok with one of those people seeing what you want to say, don’t post it.
    • Don’t post anything online that you wouldn’t put on the front page of the newspaper.

    For more information about the legalities of social media, please check out my book The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed.

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    You can connect with me on TwitterGoogle+FacebookYouTubeLinkedIn, or you can email me.
    Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.

  • Sending a Bill When Someone Steals Your Work

    Mushroom? by Oslo in the Summertime from Flickr
    Mushroom? by Oslo in the Summertime from Flickr

    I’m a member of a Facebook group for people to discuss and share instances where other people use their work. Most of the members are nature photographers who do gorgeous work. Most of them have no desire to sue people who steal their work, but they would like to be compensated. And some of them are getting pissed when they find that someone has stolen their work and have started sending bills to people who use their work without permission.

    This isn’t a bad idea. I’ve had a friend get a bill in the mail when he used someone’s photograph without permission that he found via Google Images. You can view it here or below.

    When someone comes to me and wants to send a bill to anyone they discover is infringing on their copyrights, I suggest they add information to the website where they show their work about licensing terms and fees. This makes it more credible when the artist sends a bill that essentially says that by using a photograph, the infringer has agreed to pay the fee and abide by the license’s terms. As long as the infringer complies, they are no longer committing copyright infringement.

    The downside of this strategy is many people will ignore such a bill if they receive one. Then the question for the artist is “What’s next?” Do you sue them? Send a DMCA takedown notice to get the work taken off their site? Call them out publicly for using your work without permission? Do you drop the issue?

    My friend who got the bill for using an authorized image earlier this year got a bill from a company with a track record of suing people who don’t pay the bill and winning. In his case, he choices appeared to be pay the bill (or try to negotiate a lower price) or get sued. If you don’t follow up when people don’t pay the bill, it’s kind of like the photo radar tickets. If you get one in the mail, you can deal with it by paying the fine or going to traffic school or avoid service for four months until the court drops the charge.

    I’m not one to tell people what they should do, but I advise people to think their plan of action all the way through before selecting a course of action. If you need help deciding what’s the best strategy for protecting your copyrights, please contact a copyright attorney in your community.

    For more information about copyright and blogs, please check out my book The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed.
    You can connect with me on TwitterGoogle+FacebookYouTubeLinkedIn, or you can email me.
    Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.

  • Update on Registering the Copyright in your Blog

    Library of Congress by ctj71081 from Flickr - Where your work goes when you register it with the U.S. Copyright Office.
    Library of Congress by ctj71081 from Flickr – Where your work goes when you register it with the U.S. Copyright Office.

    I’ve been a proponent of registering your copyright in your blog every three months. The federal Copyright Act states you must register the copyright in your blog within three months of publication or one month of learning of the infringement, whichever happens first.

    So every three months (March 31st, June 30th, September 30th, and December 31st) I have a note on my calendar to register my blogs. I take all the content I’ve added to my blog since my last registration, create a PDF, and register it.

    I made a mistake on my last copyright application.

    I let logic dictate my action and I claimed that my publication date was December 31, 2013 on my last application. I should have said that my word was “unpublished.” If I declare that my work is published, I have to register each post individually. If the work is “unpublished,” the dated posts can be registered as a group.

    You would think that putting something on the internet counts as publishing a work, but it doesn’t. In the Copyright Office’s words, “For copyright purposes, ‘publication’ means the distribution of copies of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. Offering to distribute copies to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display is also ‘publication.’ The following do not constitute “publication:” the printing or other reproduction of copies, a public performance or display of the work, or sending copies of the work to the Copyright Office.”

    If the only place you put your content is on your blog, it’s likely not published. If you repurpose your content in multiple locations, it might be. (Talk to a copyright attorney to see if you’ve “published” your work.)

    The downside of blog content not counting as published is you have to register you work prior to it being stolen to be eligible for statutory damages under the copyright laws. So the idea a lot of my copyright attorney friends and I believed about registering every three months is not a good strategy. Also, the Copyright Office doesn’t like it when you register posts that were released on different days as a single work. Experience tells me that they’ll let you do it, but if they know that’s what you’re doing, they’ll tell you that you have to register each post individually.

    Because of this, the best strategy for people who want to be able to sue for copyright infringement if their blog content is stolen is to register your work before you put a post on your site. Yes, this will be more expensive because each post will need its own registration, so you might want to only register the posts you think will be stolen, and even then you may want to only register the posts that you think will be stolen by someone who can afford to pay the damages assessed by the court and your attorneys’s fees. Otherwise you might be better off not suing for copyright infringement and sending a cease and desist or a DMCA takedown notice.

    If someone steals your work, you should talk with a copyright lawyer ASAP. Even if you didn’t register you work before the infringement occurred, you may be in a situation where it is worthwhile to pursue actual damages which is how much money you lost and the alleged infringer made because of the infringement. They can also discuss other ways to address infringement that don’t involve the court system.

    For more information about copyright and blogs, please check out my book The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed.
    You can connect with me on TwitterGoogle+FacebookYouTubeLinkedIn, or you can email me.
    Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.

  • Coming Soon: The Legal Side of Blogging

    Coming Soon by Rebecca Wilson

    I’m so excited to announce that my first ebook, The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed will be released on Amazon next week!

    I’ve been blogging since 2009 and I wanted to write a book by a blogger for bloggers about the legal issues that come with having a blog. This book is a combination of multiple research projects on the legalities of blogging that I’ve done over the last two years. This books combines the findings of those projects, dumps the legalese, and gives  bloggers clear information about issues like copyright, privacy, and defamation.

    My family and friends are participating in a collective book purchasing event (aka bum rushing the charts) to give my book a boost in Amazon’s rankings next Thursday, October 4th between 10am and 11am Pacific Time. If you’re planning on buying the book, you’re welcome to join us.  And if you love the book, please leave me a review on Amazon.

    I’m selling my ebook at $3.99, which is significantly lower than the price many other lawyers put on their books. I wanted my book to be accessible to my audience which is bloggers, not just legal bloggers.

    I never could have pulled off this book by myself so I need to thank the people who helped make this possible.

    Thank you to everyone else who helped me along the way. It’s been an incredible six months finishing this project. I also made a video about my book’s release here.

    Feel free to connect with me via TwitterGoogle+Facebook, and LinkedIn, or you can email me.
    Please visit my homepage for more information about Carter Law Firm.