Register, Rinse and Repeat: Protecting Your Creative Works Online |
| Register, Rinse and Repeat: Protecting Your Creative Works Online Posted: 01 Nov 2013 09:20 AM PDT
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." ~ Mark Twain Creating something worthwhile is never easy. The process of writing a blog post, painting a portrait, or recording a song is time consuming and, at times, physically and emotionally demanding. But once your masterpiece is completed, your work, in some ways, has only just started, because protecting your copyright is a never-ending job. First, some good news: you own copyright in your creative work as soon as you "fix it in a tangible medium." Essentially, as soon as it's out of your imagination and down on paper, you own it. This holds true also for blog posts and other digital media, once created. Copyright doesn't last forever, but it lasts for a long time. If the work is your own, individual piece, copyright lasts for your life, plus 70 years. For joint works involving more than one artist, copyright lasts for the life of the last surviving author, plus 70 years. If you create a "work for hire," meaning there was a written agreement signed before you started the work indicating that the company commissioning the work would own it, then copyright lasts for 95 years after publication or 120 years after the date of creation, whichever is shorter. Note that, in this instance, the person or company who hired you owns the work, not you.
A few key points:
You can't sue for infringement until your work is registered, which limits your options. You at least want to be able to invoke the possibility of a lawsuit in order to motivate the infringing party to stop using your work without permission. It costs $35 to register your work online, so it's well worth the money and effort. If you have a large number of blog posts, consider registering them together as a compilation: one registration, one fee. If you can, register the work within 3 months of publication, so you can seek statutory damages and attorneys' fees. This is critical, because it's sometimes difficult for bloggers and artists to prove actual damages, or specifically how much money they lost as a result of the infringement. Even if you miss the three-month mark, register, because if you register within 5 years of publication, it's prima facie evidence that your copyright is valid. This means that the defendant will have to prove otherwise in your lawsuit. Think of it this way: the less proof you have to produce, the less money the litigation costs you. If you want to permit some uses of your work, consider releasing it pursuant to a Creative Commons license. These licenses allow people (or companies) to use your work, so long as certain conditions are met. Creative Commons licenses range from attribution only (credit), to more restrictive, such as licenses allow use, but disallow any changes to the work. You also have the choice of using a Creative Commons license that forbids commercial use, if you don't want other people profiting from your blog posts or pictures. Here's what to do in the event someone uses your content without permission (e.g. scrapes your blog, makes t-shirts out of your photograph, or uses your song as their podcast bumper).
Those are your options, from most palatable to least. You might well elect not to pursue infringers in some instances, especially if they're clearly outside the jurisdiction of a domestic court, or if they are unlikely to have any money to pay a judgment. Your best course of action is to monitor for infringing uses of your work, proactively use the copyright notice, register your creative works, and watermark images that you create for use with your blog posts. Addressing infringement is never fun, but take some solace in the fact that your work is good enough for someone to want to steal. (I'm a glass half-full kind of girl.) Pic via Flickr user Brenda Starr       |
| Announcing #Blogchat’s November Sponsor, All Topics Plus Special Co-Host! Posted: 01 Nov 2013 06:37 AM PDT
Now to tie in with Pencils.com sponsoring #Blogchat in November, we’re going to make the theme of #Blogchat this month be on creative writing! It’s a natural fit for both Pencils.com as well as #Blogchat! (Cue late-night informercial voice) But wait….that’s not all!
Here’s the topics for every week in November: November 3rd: Disclosure rules and protecting your creative works with Kerry Gorgone! Again look for a guest post here later today from Kerry on this topic! November 10th: The creative process. We’ll look at how we write our blog posts, and also look at the digital and analog tools we use in the writing process. November 17th: Guest posting. We’ll discuss how to get guest-posting gigs as well as how to bring on people to guest-post on your blog. November 24th: OPEN MIC! No set blogging topic although I will probably have some questions about finding creativity in our writing in line with this month’s theme. I’m really excited about this month because we’ve never had a theme for the entire month, especially not with a sponsor. But the topic of creative writing is such a perfect fit for Pencils.com since they are literally selling the tools that help us create our own works of art! BTW if your company wants to sponsor #Blogchat in December, here’s all the details as well as the price. See you this Sunday and don’t forgot to check back in a few hours for Kerry’s guest post!    |
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