August 7, 2013 at 17:506 ways to protect copyright
Hi, Habr.
The LendWings training platform is preparing to work together with one right Business Angel from Belarus, and we decided to postpone the launch to September 1st so that MVP is not in a completely raw state.
Closer to the launch, we will definitely tell you about the whole process of formalizing our relations with the investor and team members, describe how they solved problems and prepared the project.
Before turning on the combat mode, I will tell you about several interesting courses and authors with whom we plan to work. I'll start with a fairly simple but relevant material.
It will be about a free course on the protection of intellectual property.
Len Smith is the owner of Copyrighting On Demand , a specialist 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 major world 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 with a preview and several chapters from a course which were processed by the author specially for LendWings and translated by our team.
I tried to choose the most interesting, and the whole course will be available on our platform in free access.
Copyright protects products of intellectual work: website content, software, films, audio recordings, articles, art 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 a fee for the right to use your product.
Exceptions
1. Ideas (plot of the novel)
2. Pure facts
3. Everything that is not fixed (located in someone’s head and not stored on storage media)
4. Short names: names, titles, or marketing slogans
To protect your work with copyright, you do not need any lengthy preparations, as in the case of a patent. You just have to save your work on any material information medium and use the following signature after any of your work:
Copyright your name, date or your name, date
It would seem that everything is simple. But the flip side of the coin is that proving your authorship is extremely difficult.
I would like to share some tips that may be useful to you:
1. Simple, irrefutable evidence.
I called this technique because it is extremely simple and works in almost any corner of the world. Wherever there is state mail. Please note that a private company will no longer be such conclusive evidence.
You take the fruit of your intellectual work, indicate the necessary symbols of copyright protection, take it to the post office on any information medium, preferably as long as possible, buy an envelope and ... send a letter to yourself.
Your envelope will bear the postal service stamp with the date.
This envelope will be irrefutable proof of your authorship in any court of the world, while litigation for the theft of intellectual property from websites can last for years.
2. Powerful acquaintance
In our society, authority sometimes means more than evidence. If you work with a large customer, or you have an uncle in Washington, then their testimony and support in your case against attackers can be very important. Any person with connections who has information about your involvement in the product of intellectual work can act as an influential acquaintance.
3. Shuttle diplomacy
This method is not entirely honest from a legal point of view, but effective. I will reveal this method to you by telling a short story:
Once, surfing the internet I came across my site. It contained my materials, my services and products, and even my photograph. But another domain name and other details. I started digging: I found one of my opponent’s email accounts, 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 openly pirated bullet-proof hosters. I realized that the situation is almost deadlock. And here'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. In Photoshop, I forged a letter from an influential American government organization stating that some materials posted on my website, in particular, articles for government websites, could be distorted and used by attackers to the detriment of national security. And theoretically, this could be true.
3. I transferred the information to the payment system that the pirate used, along with a fake screenshot of the host’s response.
4. I waited for a 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 to the intruder’s personal box that his wallets were arrested, and you can not turn to the host for help, because even deleting 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, stating that the only way out of the situation is to completely delete 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 could not be convicted of falsifying 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 my client.
Please note that in the case of a fight against an attacker who places his site on the server of a “white” hosting company, you just have to go through the first step and your requirements will be required to be met.
4. ISBN
What is ISBN? This is an international standard book number. This is the official, internationally recognized registration form that publishers, booksellers, and libraries use to order, list, and stock inventory.
In fact, this is just an inventory number. But I know some self-published novelist writers who defended their work with this number.
5. Companies offering copyright registration
In most countries, there are no state and / or semi-state bodies that register copyright. An 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 function as a registrar.
There are many independent commercial organizations that you can find on the Internet that offer to act as a registrar of your copyrights 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 are required from you. Last, I would not trust.
If you decide to enlist the support of an online registrar, I advise you to check the guarantees that they offer. Such a service will cost you approximately $ 50-60 for five years of registration. And in fact, their job is to, at your first request, start work on the first three, points described above.
6. Specialized online services
In connection with the growing popularity and importance of the music industry, a number of companies have appeared offering pirated content removal services. They have become so popular and successful that even book publishers are actively using their services.
Unlike the companies that we spoke about earlier that offer copyright registration, they offer more active actions to protect your materials. Instead of simply registering your copyrights, they are actively fighting to prevent the distribution of your material on the network. Some went even further. Without your direct participation and your decision-making, they monitor the possible occurrence of a violation of your rights around the clock. A search on the Internet will provide you with a huge selection of these types of companies.
I can recommend only one, since I wrote a detailed review of this company and talked with its managers - this is Linkbusters. They claim that they remove 99% of pirated content from file sharing and 70% from torrent sites. Check their work, but before making 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 the mails of lendwings@lendwings.com (or at least leave comments) with the names of your favorite Russian or Western authors, or top experts from any field, and we will try to agree with them on recording training courses for our users . Whoever has reached the correct goal will receive a course for free!
The LendWings training platform is preparing to work together with one right Business Angel from Belarus, and we decided to postpone the launch to September 1st so that MVP is not in a completely raw state.
Closer to the launch, we will definitely tell you about the whole process of formalizing our relations with the investor and team members, describe how they solved problems and prepared the project.
Before turning on the combat mode, I will tell you about several interesting courses and authors with whom we plan to work. I'll start with a fairly simple but relevant material.
It will be about a free course on the protection of intellectual property.
Len Smith is the owner of Copyrighting On Demand , a specialist 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 major world 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 with a preview and several chapters from a course which were processed by the author specially for LendWings and translated by our team.
I tried to choose the most interesting, and the whole course will be available on our platform in free access.
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 area. And this information is practically useless for those who are legally savvy. But, as we know, in practice there are very few such people. My lectures are just a short but easily digestible course to protect your rights. And I also use tricks 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, films, audio recordings, articles, art 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 a fee for the right to use your product.
Exceptions
1. Ideas (plot of the novel)
2. Pure facts
3. Everything that is not fixed (located in someone’s head and not stored on storage media)
4. Short names: names, titles, or marketing slogans
To protect your work with copyright, you do not need any lengthy preparations, as in the case of a patent. You just have to save your work on any material information medium and use the following signature after any of your work:
Copyright your name, date or your name, date
It would seem that everything is simple. But the flip side of the coin is that proving your authorship is extremely difficult.
I would like to share some tips that may be useful to you:
1. Simple, irrefutable evidence.
I called this technique because it is extremely simple and works in almost any corner of the world. Wherever there is state mail. Please note that a private company will no longer be such conclusive evidence.
You take the fruit of your intellectual work, indicate the necessary symbols of copyright protection, take it to the post office on any information medium, preferably as long as possible, buy an envelope and ... send a letter to yourself.
Your envelope will bear the postal service stamp with the date.
This envelope will be irrefutable proof of your authorship in any court of the world, while litigation for the theft of intellectual property from websites can last for years.
2. Powerful acquaintance
In our society, authority sometimes means more than evidence. If you work with a large customer, or you have an uncle in Washington, then their testimony and support in your case against attackers can be very important. Any person with connections who has information about your involvement in the product of intellectual work can act as an influential acquaintance.
3. Shuttle diplomacy
This method is not entirely honest from a legal point of view, but effective. I will reveal this method to you by telling a short story:
Once, surfing the internet I came across my site. It contained my materials, my services and products, and even my photograph. But another domain name and other details. I started digging: I found one of my opponent’s email accounts, 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 openly pirated bullet-proof hosters. I realized that the situation is almost deadlock. And here'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. In Photoshop, I forged a letter from an influential American government organization stating that some materials posted on my website, in particular, articles for government websites, could be distorted and used by attackers to the detriment of national security. And theoretically, this could be true.
3. I transferred the information to the payment system that the pirate used, along with a fake screenshot of the host’s response.
4. I waited for a 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 to the intruder’s personal box that his wallets were arrested, and you can not turn to the host for help, because even deleting 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, stating that the only way out of the situation is to completely delete 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 could not be convicted of falsifying 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 my client.
Please note that in the case of a fight against an attacker who places his site on the server of a “white” hosting company, you just have to go through the first step and your requirements will be required to be met.
4. ISBN
What is ISBN? This is an international standard book number. This is the official, internationally recognized registration form that publishers, booksellers, and libraries use to order, list, and stock inventory.
In fact, this is just an inventory number. But I know some self-published novelist writers who defended their work with this number.
5. Companies offering copyright registration
In most countries, there are no state and / or semi-state bodies that register copyright. An 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 function as a registrar.
There are many independent commercial organizations that you can find on the Internet that offer to act as a registrar of your copyrights 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 are required from you. Last, I would not trust.
If you decide to enlist the support of an online registrar, I advise you to check the guarantees that they offer. Such a service will cost you approximately $ 50-60 for five years of registration. And in fact, their job is to, at your first request, start work on the first three, points described above.
6. Specialized online services
In connection with the growing popularity and importance of the music industry, a number of companies have appeared offering pirated content removal services. They have become so popular and successful that even book publishers are actively using their services.
Unlike the companies that we spoke about earlier that offer copyright registration, they offer more active actions to protect your materials. Instead of simply registering your copyrights, they are actively fighting to prevent the distribution of your material on the network. Some went even further. Without your direct participation and your decision-making, they monitor the possible occurrence of a violation of your rights around the clock. A search on the Internet will provide you with a huge selection of these types of companies.
I can recommend only one, since I wrote a detailed review of this company and talked with its managers - this is Linkbusters. They claim that they remove 99% of pirated content from file sharing and 70% from torrent sites. Check their work, but before making 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 the mails of lendwings@lendwings.com (or at least leave comments) with the names of your favorite Russian or Western authors, or top experts from any field, and we will try to agree with them on recording training courses for our users . Whoever has reached the correct goal will receive a course for free!