Copyright Registration

Content is king on the web or so the saying goes. Copyright registration is a means of protecting yours because, shockingly [tongue firmly in cheek] someone might steal it online. 

What is copyright? It is the intellectual property right associated with any work created by an author. When Stephen King writes a book, he owns the copyright to it. If anyone tries to use it without his permission, he can sue them for copyright infringement so long as he has already registered the copyright with the copyright office at the Library of Congress.

Copyright issues are a huge issue on the web. You are undoubtedly familiar with the music download hubbub that never seems to end. Well, the artists and record labels are suing for copyright infringement. In fact, there is now an act that applies the legal right to the web known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act aka DMCA. 

What does this mean for you? After all, you probably do your best singing in the shower. Well, there are people on the web who build sites by "scraping" the content of others. There are programs that will essentially search the web for certain subjects, copy the resulting pages it finds and then republish them on some anonymous blog. This can really hurt your site because search engines can have a real problem figuring out which content is legitimate and which is copied. If you are unlucky, your site can be downgraded or disappear from the search engines completely. That is pretty much a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, we can use the provisions of the DMCA to force hosts to take down the offending site and put an end to such practices. 

Why should you register? The advantages more than make it worthwhile. The first is a simple one – you must register before you can file a lawsuit against anyone that has stolen your copyrighted material. Since the registration process takes time, getting it out of the way beforehand simply makes sense unless you like to drum your fingers on the table watching someone use your stolen content for months on end. 

Other advantages include:

• If registration is done within 3 months of the first publication of the work, statutory damages and attorneys' fees can be recovered by the copyright owner. This equates to a damage claim per work of between $750 and $30,000. The award of attorneys' fees is added to this. 

• If done within 5 years of publication, the registration will constitute prima facie evidence of validity of the copyright and facts stated in the application. This means the burden of disproving the copyright falls on the defendant, a very powerful switch.

The web is full of stolen content. There are programs that "scrape" the content off other sites for use on automated blogs and the like. It is not a question of whether your content will be stolen, but when and how often. Copyright registration is the first step to fighting back against such theft. Contact me at 619-637-6043 today to start the registration process.