Wikipedia defines copyright infringement as the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.
A couple of years ago received an email from a site visitor advising me of a potential legal situation I might be exposed to involving copyright infringement. I did appreciate the notice and it was well worth checking into. I’m bringing this up again because I noticed this whole issue is beginning to make it’s second round in recent blogs. I thought it a perfect time to take a serious look at what Copyright Infringement really is and how it can impact us.
The visitor was kind enough to send a link to a very popular forum of which I happen to be a member. A very well known and respected internet marketer had apparently posted that they were pressured to pay several thousand dollars to settle an out of court claim of copyright infringement. By out of court I mean no suit was filed and no court action was taken.
The visitor, after reading these forum posts, felt I might be in liable jeopardy because I give away and use the very program in question. To make a long and old story short, I purchased a program that will generate legal pages/notices for websites. Apparently someone claimed that the program owner/developer used their actual legal statements and inserted them into the program. So now, with each generated page, this person’s actual legal notices are being replicated word for word.
Now, from what I gathered from the forum posts, this person is going from person to person with copyright infringement claims and accepting large amounts of money ‘to make them go away’. So I guess if you ‘purchase’ the rights from this person you are safe from legal suit? There are so many holes in this story I find it very hard to believe a word of it.
After reading the posts myself, I decided to do a little research just in case. I read for hours, then I requested information from the U.S. Copyright Office and finally a called a friend that’s an attorney in the state of Michigan. He was quick to say that he is not a copyright attorney but he was familiar with the basics.
Here’s what I found:
1. The big one is simply how liable can someone be. For example, lets say this same article I’m writing now is Plagiarized word for word and published on someone’s site. I doesn’t matter if they give me credit or not without my permission they have violated my copyright. Even if I haven’t registered the work with the U.S. Copyright Office I’m still protected. But to what extent? Well, if I didn’t register, I’m able to sue for my losses, plus any profits that the offending Website made directly from the infringement. But in a case like this, neither me or the thief that took my work is charging money for the article. Neither of us are making any profit from my writings. So I would end up paying attorneys fees to recover nothing! You can sue for damages but YOU have to show damage. You have to show you were hurt financially to recover a dime. How hard do you think that would be?
Now, with that said, if I had actually paid the fee and registered this article (I didn’t so steal away), within 3 months after publication or prior to the copyright infringement I could hire an attorney and sue for statutory damages and attorney’s fees but I still have a lot to prove. The odds on the person claiming ownership of the work generated by this program having actually paid a filing fee and regisering it is unlikely at best. Who registers their copyright notice?
2. There is a question if the legal notices are even protected by copyright. Literally millions of websites have these legal notices and we know most were not written fresh without any influence from other legal notices. The U.S. Copyright Office clearly states, “Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources” Is Not Protected by Copyright. Those legal notices are derived from other public documents and are not protected!
3. You can not legally take other peoples work, change the wording and claim it as your own. After years and years of online legal notices, that’s all anyone can do. It doesn’t matter if it was copied and pasted or written from bad memory, no one can claim to be the original owner of this type of notice anymore.
“Wrote from scratch with your own thoughts and ideas? Hog-wash! Prove it! You’re out of your mind!”
4. This speaks for itself: From Copyright Registration for Online Works
“For a claim in a computer program that establishes the format of text and graphics on the computer screen when a website is viewed (such as a program written in html), registration will extend to the entire copyrightable content of the computer program code. It will not, however, extend to any website content generated by the program that is not present in the identifying material received and that is not described on the application.”
Is it right to take someone’s work? No, but it’s not alright to go around demanding money everywhere you can using the threat of legal action if they don’t pay. That’s called extortion and it comes with jail time. My attorney also said extortion is much easier to prove!
Related Links and Articles
Copyright Law of the United States of America
10 Big Myths about copyright explained
FAQ about Piracy or Copyright Infringement
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Brian Hawkins on 21-08-2008 
