6 ways to protect copyright
Hi, Habr.
The training platform LendWings is preparing to work with one correct Business Angel from Belarus and we decided to postpone the launch to September 1, so that the MVP is not in a completely raw state.
Closer to the launch, we will tell you about the whole process of formalizing our relations with the investor and team members, describe how we solved the problems and prepared the project.
')
Before turning on the combat mode, I will talk about several interesting courses and authors with whom we are planning to work. I'll start with a fairly simple, but relevant material.
It's about a free course on intellectual property protection.
Len Smith is the owner of Copyrighting On Demand , an expert in copyright protection, copywriting and online sales. Len Smith is a professional with 20 years of experience, a sales coach for many startups, as well as a partner and friend of the world's largest companies. His clients include Vodafone, The Financing Leasing Association, Lloyds and many others.
In his course “Protecting Intellectual Property”, he reveals the basic techniques of protection and gives some interesting tips.
I will ask Habr to familiarize himself with the previews and several chapters from the course that have been reworked by the author specifically for LendWings and translated by our team.
I tried to choose the most interesting, and the whole course will be fully available on our platform for free.
Copyright protects products of intellectual work: website content, software, movies, audio recordings, articles, artistic and scientific works.
Copyright does not allow other people to use the product of your creative activity without your permission. It allows you to charge for the right to use your product.
Exceptions
1. Ideas (novel plot)
2. Pure facts
3. Anything that is not fixed (is in someone's head, and not stored on storage media)
4. Short names: names, titles, or marketing slogans
To protect your copyright work, no lengthy preparation is necessary, as is the case with a patent. You just have to save your work on any material information carrier and use the following signature after any of your work:
Copyright your name, date or your name, date
It would seem simple. But the other side of the coin is that it is extremely difficult to prove your authorship.
I would like to share a few tips that may be useful to you:
1. Simple irrefutable proof
I called this method because it is extremely simple and works in almost every corner of the world. Wherever there is a state post. Please note that a private company will no longer be such irrefutable evidence.
You take the fruit of your intellectual work, indicate the necessary symbolism of copyright protection, refer to the mail on any information carrier, preferably as long as possible, buy an envelope and ... send a letter to yourself.
On your envelope will be a stamp of the postal service with the date.
This envelope will be irrefutable proof of your authorship in any court of the world, while litigation on the theft of intellectual property from websites can last for years.
2. Influential acquaintance
In our society, authority sometimes means more than evidence. If you work with a large customer, or you have an uncle in Washington, their testimonies and support in your case against intruders can be very important. Anyone with connections who has information about your involvement in the product of intellectual labor can act as an influential acquaintance.
3. Shuttle diplomacy
This method is not entirely fair from a legal point of view, but effective. I will tell you this way by telling a little story:
Once, surfing the internet, I came across my site. It contained my materials, my services and products, and even my photo. But another domain name and other details. I began to “dig”: I found one of my opponent’s e-mail boxes, found the contacts of his host and payment systems that the attacker used, but no one responded to my letters and requests. This happens if the attackers use the frankly pirated abuzoustoychivyh hosters. I realized that the situation is almost deadlock. And that's what I did:
1. I wrote a letter with all the requirements of the “copyright law in the digital age” (dmca). The letter was signed by me, certified, justified and contained contact information.
2. I forged in Photoshop a letter from an influential US government organization, which stated that some of the materials posted on my site, in particular, articles for government sites, could be distorted and used by attackers to the detriment of national security. And theoretically this could be true.
3. I passed the information to the payment system that the pirate used, along with a fake screenshot of the hoster’s response.
4. I waited for the frightened reaction of the payment system and sent the materials along with the “clean” response of the payment system to the hoster.
5. I wrote on the personal box of the attacker that his wallets were arrested, and you can not turn to the hoster for help, because even the removal of materials does not save the situation.
6. Next, I wrote another letter to the hoster, in which I referred to the law, which does not exempt from liability if the violator deletes the materials, with the posting that the only way out of the situation would be to completely remove the website.
7. The next day the site ceased to exist.
In my fakes, I used the changed names of government organizations and their symbols, so I couldn’t be caught faking official documents.
I was protected, and at the same time, I created a fairly believable legend, which was enough to convince the hoster to close the site and the payment system - the wallets of his client.
Please note that in the case of a fight against an attacker who places his website on a server of a “white” hosting company, you just have to go through the first item and your requirements will be required to fulfill.
4. ISBN
What is ISBN? This is an international standard book number. This is the official, internationally recognized registration form used by publishers, booksellers and libraries for ordering, listing and inventory control.
In essence, this is just an inventory number. But I know some self-published novelist writers who defended their work with this issue.
5. Companies offering copyright registration
In most countries, there are no state or semi-state copyright registration authorities. The exception is the United States of America. They have a website www. copyright.gov
There is an intellectual property office in the UK - www.ipo.gov.uk - this is an incredibly useful site, but it does not act as a registrar.
There are many independent commercial organizations that you can find on the Internet that offer to act as your copyright registrar for a small fee. Some call themselves official organizations, using the word “Authority” in the name of their company, and some do not even ask you to send them a copy of your work - registration and payment is required of you. Last, I would not trust.
If you decide to enlist the support of an online registrar, I advise you to check the guarantees they offer. The cost of this service you will be about 50-60 dollars for five years of registration. And as a matter of fact, their job is to start work on the first three points above, on your first request.
6. Specialized online services
Due to the growing popularity and importance of the music industry, a number of companies have appeared, offering services to remove pirated content. They became so popular and successful that even publishers actively use their services.
Unlike the companies that we talked about before, offering copyright registration, they offer more active actions to protect your materials. Instead of simply registering your copyrights, they are actively fighting to prevent your material from being distributed online. Some went even further. Without your direct participation and decision-making, they monitor the possible phenomenon of violation of your rights around the clock. A search on the Internet will provide you with a huge selection of such companies.
I can only recommend one, as I wrote a detailed review of this company and talked with its managers - this is Linkbasters . They claim that they remove 99% of pirated content from file sharing sites and 70% from torrent sites. Check their work, but before you make a decision, analyze other companies providing such services.
I hope these 6 steps will be useful to you.
Fight and win!
Ps The LendWings project asks you to send us lendwings@lendwings.com (or at least leave in the comments) the names of your favorite Russian or Western authors, or top experts from any field, and we will try to agree with them about recording training courses for our users . Guided to the correct goal - will receive a course for free!
The training platform LendWings is preparing to work with one correct Business Angel from Belarus and we decided to postpone the launch to September 1, so that the MVP is not in a completely raw state.
Closer to the launch, we will tell you about the whole process of formalizing our relations with the investor and team members, describe how we solved the problems and prepared the project.
')
Before turning on the combat mode, I will talk about several interesting courses and authors with whom we are planning to work. I'll start with a fairly simple, but relevant material.
It's about a free course on intellectual property protection.
Len Smith is the owner of Copyrighting On Demand , an expert in copyright protection, copywriting and online sales. Len Smith is a professional with 20 years of experience, a sales coach for many startups, as well as a partner and friend of the world's largest companies. His clients include Vodafone, The Financing Leasing Association, Lloyds and many others.
In his course “Protecting Intellectual Property”, he reveals the basic techniques of protection and gives some interesting tips.
I will ask Habr to familiarize himself with the previews and several chapters from the course that have been reworked by the author specifically for LendWings and translated by our team.
I tried to choose the most interesting, and the whole course will be fully available on our platform for free.
I hope you find useful information for yourself. I must once again emphasize that everything I have stated is only my opinion and is based on my personal experience in this field. And this information is practically useless for those who are legally savvy. But, as we know, there are very few such people in practice. My lectures are just a short, but easily digestible course on protecting your rights. And I use techniques that no law firm in the world will tell you.
Best regards, Len Smith.
6 ways to protect copyright
Copyright protects products of intellectual work: website content, software, movies, audio recordings, articles, artistic and scientific works.
Copyright does not allow other people to use the product of your creative activity without your permission. It allows you to charge for the right to use your product.
Exceptions
1. Ideas (novel plot)
2. Pure facts
3. Anything that is not fixed (is in someone's head, and not stored on storage media)
4. Short names: names, titles, or marketing slogans
To protect your copyright work, no lengthy preparation is necessary, as is the case with a patent. You just have to save your work on any material information carrier and use the following signature after any of your work:
Copyright your name, date or your name, date
It would seem simple. But the other side of the coin is that it is extremely difficult to prove your authorship.
I would like to share a few tips that may be useful to you:
1. Simple irrefutable proof
I called this method because it is extremely simple and works in almost every corner of the world. Wherever there is a state post. Please note that a private company will no longer be such irrefutable evidence.
You take the fruit of your intellectual work, indicate the necessary symbolism of copyright protection, refer to the mail on any information carrier, preferably as long as possible, buy an envelope and ... send a letter to yourself.
On your envelope will be a stamp of the postal service with the date.
This envelope will be irrefutable proof of your authorship in any court of the world, while litigation on the theft of intellectual property from websites can last for years.
2. Influential acquaintance
In our society, authority sometimes means more than evidence. If you work with a large customer, or you have an uncle in Washington, their testimonies and support in your case against intruders can be very important. Anyone with connections who has information about your involvement in the product of intellectual labor can act as an influential acquaintance.
3. Shuttle diplomacy
This method is not entirely fair from a legal point of view, but effective. I will tell you this way by telling a little story:
Once, surfing the internet, I came across my site. It contained my materials, my services and products, and even my photo. But another domain name and other details. I began to “dig”: I found one of my opponent’s e-mail boxes, found the contacts of his host and payment systems that the attacker used, but no one responded to my letters and requests. This happens if the attackers use the frankly pirated abuzoustoychivyh hosters. I realized that the situation is almost deadlock. And that's what I did:
1. I wrote a letter with all the requirements of the “copyright law in the digital age” (dmca). The letter was signed by me, certified, justified and contained contact information.
2. I forged in Photoshop a letter from an influential US government organization, which stated that some of the materials posted on my site, in particular, articles for government sites, could be distorted and used by attackers to the detriment of national security. And theoretically this could be true.
3. I passed the information to the payment system that the pirate used, along with a fake screenshot of the hoster’s response.
4. I waited for the frightened reaction of the payment system and sent the materials along with the “clean” response of the payment system to the hoster.
5. I wrote on the personal box of the attacker that his wallets were arrested, and you can not turn to the hoster for help, because even the removal of materials does not save the situation.
6. Next, I wrote another letter to the hoster, in which I referred to the law, which does not exempt from liability if the violator deletes the materials, with the posting that the only way out of the situation would be to completely remove the website.
7. The next day the site ceased to exist.
In my fakes, I used the changed names of government organizations and their symbols, so I couldn’t be caught faking official documents.
I was protected, and at the same time, I created a fairly believable legend, which was enough to convince the hoster to close the site and the payment system - the wallets of his client.
Please note that in the case of a fight against an attacker who places his website on a server of a “white” hosting company, you just have to go through the first item and your requirements will be required to fulfill.
4. ISBN
What is ISBN? This is an international standard book number. This is the official, internationally recognized registration form used by publishers, booksellers and libraries for ordering, listing and inventory control.
In essence, this is just an inventory number. But I know some self-published novelist writers who defended their work with this issue.
5. Companies offering copyright registration
In most countries, there are no state or semi-state copyright registration authorities. The exception is the United States of America. They have a website www. copyright.gov
There is an intellectual property office in the UK - www.ipo.gov.uk - this is an incredibly useful site, but it does not act as a registrar.
There are many independent commercial organizations that you can find on the Internet that offer to act as your copyright registrar for a small fee. Some call themselves official organizations, using the word “Authority” in the name of their company, and some do not even ask you to send them a copy of your work - registration and payment is required of you. Last, I would not trust.
If you decide to enlist the support of an online registrar, I advise you to check the guarantees they offer. The cost of this service you will be about 50-60 dollars for five years of registration. And as a matter of fact, their job is to start work on the first three points above, on your first request.
6. Specialized online services
Due to the growing popularity and importance of the music industry, a number of companies have appeared, offering services to remove pirated content. They became so popular and successful that even publishers actively use their services.
Unlike the companies that we talked about before, offering copyright registration, they offer more active actions to protect your materials. Instead of simply registering your copyrights, they are actively fighting to prevent your material from being distributed online. Some went even further. Without your direct participation and decision-making, they monitor the possible phenomenon of violation of your rights around the clock. A search on the Internet will provide you with a huge selection of such companies.
I can only recommend one, as I wrote a detailed review of this company and talked with its managers - this is Linkbasters . They claim that they remove 99% of pirated content from file sharing sites and 70% from torrent sites. Check their work, but before you make a decision, analyze other companies providing such services.
I hope these 6 steps will be useful to you.
Fight and win!
Ps The LendWings project asks you to send us lendwings@lendwings.com (or at least leave in the comments) the names of your favorite Russian or Western authors, or top experts from any field, and we will try to agree with them about recording training courses for our users . Guided to the correct goal - will receive a course for free!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/189338/
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