Greetings, I operate a blog and over the last few months I've had at least ten occasions where some person has copied and pasted an entire blog post from my blog to their blog or a forum and then said there doing it under fair use. However in court using an entire work as fair use has been proven not to be fair use From http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-c.html: Not a fair use. Entire publications of the Church of Scientology were posted on the Internet by several individuals without Church permission. Important factors: Fair use is intended to permit the borrowing of portions of a work, not complete works. (Religious Technology Center v. Lerma, 40 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1569 (E.D. Va. 1996).) I would like to start to take legal action against one or two of these people to get this to stop. The problem is I don't know much about how to sue someone. I've already been through the DMCA processes with all of them - just to have a counter notice filed calling it fair use. I know I should hire a lawyer, but my blog is barely breaking even (part of the reason is these idiots copying my work) and I don't have much money in reserve. Laywers usually want money up front - even on an open and shut case. Thoughts and suggestions?
I don't know, I've never sued anyone over anything, good luck with that. You don't even know in which country those webmasters are, have you identified them in DMCA counter notices?
Well, maybe for starters you could try mail them and told them you will take legal action if they won't stop copycat-ing...
years ago, I was driving with a friend. I was in the backseat, and the car driver shot a bottle rocket out the window, and he lost control, and I ended up in the hospital, I thought for sure it was a sure fire win of negligent driving...two atty refused the case after the driver, and his friend lied to the police saying the wreck occured due to a flat tire which was out of his control, so everything is not always as open and shut as you think.... lawyers are in this game for lots of money...I doubt any lawyer in the world would even think about taking a case where someone cries about content taken from their site...so unless you have a world famous website that is going to bring lots of fame and money to your atty...you are just another wanna be site that thinks he has something speical then the next guy...if you do not want your stuff to be stolen, then kindly do not place it online, and then you will be safe.
These cases are very expensive...expect at least tens of thousands of dollars. File a complaint with your and his state attorney general and file BBB complaints. Other than that try to work out with him where he will give you some good links if he won't quit using your content. Maybe it could be good for both of you.
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that while you have the copyrights to everything you publish, you'll have to formally file a copyright for each piece in order to successfully sue for copyright infringement.
That's not right. You get automatic copyright protection unless you give it up or limit it, which you may do based on terms of service where you post. Filing for the copyright only helps establish ownership and publication date. Internet postings usually have an electronic trail that can help you establish these if you need them.
Jake, I think you misread my post. Of course you get automatic copyright protection upon publication but you have to register to take legal action. I just looked it up, here's the explanation from copyright.gov (US law) from their FAQ page... Do I have to register with your office to be protected? No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.†Why should I register my work if copyright protection is automatic? Registration is recommended for a number of reasons. Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within 5 years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration†and Circular 38b, Highlights of Copyright Amendments Contained in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), on non-U.S. works. I seem to recall reading somewhere that some cretin who was facing a lawsuit from an author filed the copyright on the material in question before the author did. Can't remember how it turned out but if you want to be 100% protected, you should register anything you think someone might steal. Do keep in mind, I think you could register a body of work at one time (say a website) but there was some gotcha about making changes.
if in my country there are laws governing the privacy policy on the blog .... and that there are legal provisions and the penalties ... so we can acknowledge our copyright in the blog.
If they are in the U.S. as you said, you can contact their Web hosting service and file a DMCA notice of copyright infringement. Most hosting companies in the U.S. have the procedure for doing that on their Web site. The reason is that in the U.S. the hosting company would be liable for copyright infringement too but the DMCA provides immunity to the hosting company if they follow the DMCA guidelines. That shoudl resolve the problem for you.
Yes, perhaps I did misunderstand. You do have to register before you file a lawsuit, but you can register the day before the suit is filed. If you register within 3 months of completion & before any infringing action you can get the statutory damages and attorney's fees. BUT even if you register on the last day you can get actual damages, lost profits and even punitive damages if you can add a claim for it and the situation warrants it. Prima facie evidence just means all you have to submit is the registration application to show you are the copyright owner. Like I said, with online products it is not hard to establish ownership and publication date. There are several practical things to remember. First is the cost of publication of each item you want copyrighted and the issues you mentioned with changing material on websites. Second, the cost of these lawsuits are tremendously expensive so you have to have something valuable enough that you will sue to protect if you register. Third, an award of attorneys fees or other damages means nothing if you can't collect from the other guys...and you'll only be able to collect if a big boy rips you off. So while you get automatic statutory damages of $750-30,000, you are not going to be able to collect that from some guy copying your stuff onto his blog.
These people are also claiming that its considered fair use because each post is a portion of the work not an entire work. I argue that each post is an entire work like a magazine article in a magazine. Have there been any legal decisions on this?
That's not fair use. I agree with your article analysis. They can take reasonable excerpts from your post for things like reviewing it. They can't even take a whole paragraph from your article and just put in on their site and claim it is fair use. I can't think of any fair uses that don't have an attribution to the owner. The very first fair use case, Folsom v. Marsh, dealt with a guy who copied portions of 12 volumes to create 2 volumes to sell as his own. It was not allowed.
Anyone who is victim of copy-paste artists, here are the things you can do. 1. Find the email id from whois records and send an email to owner of the site telling him that his site is violating copyright laws. Give him proof of the material. 2. Find the website hosting company which you can easily find out from nameserver entries in whois records. Mail the hosting company that their servers are hosting copied conent. All of them have 3. Scan the site which has your content. Find the names of affiliate networks and mail them your case. All affiliate networks have email address where you can email. 4. Fill DMCA complaint with Google for de-listing the site which is having your stolen content. It generally takes 2-3 days to get the case resolved. I fought with 2 violators in the past. I follow the above process. Best of luck!
Hi there I really agree with you that "Laywers usually want money up front - even on an open and shut case. " but you know you must have to hire a faithful lawyer because without a lawyer you can not proceed the matter to the final step. Thanks