E67: Copyright Infringement Basics, Part 3: How to Stop Competitors (and Former Clients) from Stealing Your Stuff

This will be episode 67 and so if you haven't listened to the last couple of episodes, episode 65 was the 1st of the series where I talked about. What exactly constitutes copyright infringement? Believe it or not, copying someone's work doesn't always involve copyright infringement. and sometimes things that you didn't think would be copyright infringement are. And so go back and listen to that one. If you haven't heard it, I also talk about what the penalties are, what the remedies are.

which includes civil remedies as well as criminal penalties. Yes, there are circumstances where copyright infringement is a crime and can even result in imprisonment. And then episode 66 was part 2 where I talked about how to not accidentally infringe someone else's copyright. Because some things that we think are innocent, but are actually copyright infringements are still infringements, and there's this thing called statutory damages that are available even for innocent infringements.

And so we want to make sure that we are, respecting each other's rights. I like to call it, you do on to others as you'd have them do on to you with respect to your intellectual property and your expertise. And so we want to be respectful of everyone's. Intellectual property rights. these are episode 66. We talk about how to make sure we aren't through our negligence or through our ignorance, infringing other people's intellectual property rights.

So, today in part 3, we're going to talk about prevention measures. And how to make sure that we don't become a victim of copyright infringement now with that, I will say that, it's virtually impossible to prevent, copyright infringement, there are just the bad actors, right?

We know that there are certain places that are known for, their piracy and we could spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, without much return trying to prevent every instance of copyright infringement and I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to become obsessed with that, but there are a combination of legal, technical, and some practical strategies that we can use to reduce the likelihood that your copyright will be infringed.

And if it is infringed, that you'll be able to access 1 of the remedies. So, 1st, the simplest, we should all do it, which is the copyright notice. I can never tell if you can see the bottom of my slides or not. I do have a copyright notice on my slides. I have them on all of my slides and it is very simply the C in a circle. The year, and that would be the year of publication. So, let's say you, started writing your novel 5 years ago. You're finally ready to publish it.

that year would be the year publication and your name. should say the copyright owner's name. for instance. In my slides, it has Aaron Austin Law PLLC because that is my employer. And as my employer, it owns the copyright and all the things that I create. And so that would be the name of the copyright owner. and the all rights reserved. I don't know. Sometimes I use that. Sometimes I don't. but basically, it's not because it's required because your copyright will attach.

Regardless of the copyright notice it attaches at the moment of creation, but this is the way you put it's literally the notice. It puts the world on notice and we're most concerned. I mean, again, the bad actors, good luck. You're not going to stop them. Right? But from Pete from the innocent infringers or the negligent or lazy infringer, that puts them on notice that, something's up on the Internet.

It actually isn't just there for your free use, someone claims copyright ownership in it, and that is what your first line of defense, or first line of offense, is letting people know that you are the copyright owner, and no, you just can't use this without my permission. And then the next line would be registering your work. Yes, you know, again, the copyright protection automatically attaches when it's created, but you do need to be registered.

That work needs to be registered with the U. S. Copyright Office in order to enforce your rights against an actual infringer. So if we go back to episodes 65, where I talk about the remedies and the penalties. work does need to be registered in the US Copyright Office in order to access those remedies, and those penalties and not a super complicated process, but it does have, little bit of cost to it. There is an application process. and so I don't recommend it for everything you create.

If you're anything like me, you're creating content all day, every day. But I do recommend it for those, parts of your work that you would go, I want to sue them for taking that, whatever that is. Like they, took my book, they took my course they copied my whole website. You these are the things that you would hire a lawyer to enforce. Those are the things that you want to have registered and you need to understand and use.

Contracts, we're going to talk about licenses a little bit more later on, but what some people don't understand is that your client agreements. Include a license to use your work and so you need to make sure that the parameters are clearly stated in that contract agreement about how your client can use or reuse your work. And so, when you have that clearly stated in your agreement, then you can access those remedies if they use it in a way that's not permitted under your client agreement.

Talk about this a lot in other trainings, because it is so important in the work that we do when we are experts with corporate clients. We are entering these agreements all the time. The client friendly language that you may be presented with. You do need to look at it, understand it and make sure you are limiting client's ability to reuse materials. Watermarking. So now we're going to get into some technical, ways to, the first three would be legal.

these would be some technical ways you can help deter infringement. So watermarking. Now, I will say that if anyone out there has experience with some of these techniques, Technical measures, because I personally do not. I'd love to have you share them with everyone. So we can kind of think about how we might be able to use them in our businesses as well as the cost. I have not kind of put some cost to these either, but watermarking is way that you can put something that's either visual.

Let's say it's a photograph that is in there that says, that. Someone else owns it, or just couldn't even say watermark so that someone just can't take it and stick it on their website. they would have to literally kind of. I'm going to go through the effort of removing this watermark so I can use it.

That will keep something from just very casually taking your work and they're also invisible watermarks that can be detected, only through use of some other technology that would read where the source of something is, with someone has. A copy of something that they are permitted to have it, but they're not supposed to make copies of it and distribute it. You can have that watermark in there. So if it shows up somewhere, like, that come from that?

You can go in and decipher that watermark and it will tell you. Who created those copies? And so that is another way to prevent distribution without your permission. Digital rights management or DMR. That's a kind of software as well. Of course, not free, but it is embedded in digital content to make sure that you control how it is distributed. So it can prevent it from being, further distributed.

Like, if you get something on Kindle or audible, it'll prevent you from just kind of sharing it with everybody. when you get a new laptop or desktop, and it has software, like, there's a version of it in there, but you have to have a key in order to unlock it. That is a version of D. R. M. I read this, although I wasn't aware of this, and hopefully you can confirm this that apple iTunes use D. R. M. to limit the number of devices you can use, the music with and wasn't aware of that.

but those are ways that we can prevent it from being, uh, distributed outside of the U. S. So, if you want to make sure that your materials don't leave the U. S. you can use as well. that is a little bit of a heavier, lift. so that would be for something that, obviously is very valuable to you that you really want to control. Online monitoring tools is another 1 that, very effective, but expensive.

so, for instance, if you have, or you've probably heard of someone receiving that cease and desist letter, we'll talk about cease and desist letters in a minute. So. from Getty images saying, hey, I noticed that you have 1 of our images on your website and they send you a license agreement for it. Well, they're using online monitoring. So they have a way of something to troll the Internet and to pick up any use of 1 or their images.

I imagine they have their own bespoke software to do that, but you can also, subscribe, for that. Um, and so you can find, any other use of your materials on the internet. one of the suggested ways of using this, which is I think is kind of interesting, which is basically the Getty Images model. Is that you find people who are using your materials and you use it as an opportunity to get a license from them to continue to use it.

if you rather that they continue to use it and get paid for it, rather than have them take it down. and so maybe you'll even find that there is.

Some part of your content that is frequently used, and maybe that would be something that you would want to create some sort of licensable content out of that, because you know that there's actually a demand out there for it and some practical things, offering a legitimate way to access your materials kind of back to the last point, there may be things that people want to use, but it's just. Kind of a lot of work to figure out how to do it. How do I get a license? Who owns it?

What do I have to do? and just from that alone, it creates enough friction that they just kind of take it and hope nobody notices, I think this probably happens a fair amount in connection with, presentations where people will go, you know, I want to refer to this graphic or this book or this. Thing, and do I need to get a license? Can I have permission to use it? Well, I don't have the time or the resources to figure it out.

So I'm just going to use it and hope nobody notices and probably nobody does notice, but we do want to make sure that we are complying with the law because of somebody. Does notice it is in fact, copyright infringement, and there are statutory damages attached to those infringements. And so I like to encourage people, if there's something that there's an easy way to give them access to it, then do it. I mean, for me, it is on my to do list.

I don't know even what number it is on my to do list, but is to get creative commons license, which I talk about. Thank you. A lot in the prior episodes, those are standard licenses that have predetermined, terms for how someone can use your copyrighted material. And so you can have a creative common license that says, hey, you know, you can use this. For commercial purposes, but you have to give me attribution, or you can only use it for non commercial purposes, or, you can use it.

So long as you don't change anything. And so that gives a very easy way. People can see right on There are symbols that tell you how you can use this work, and be in compliance with. The copyright license to use that work. And for me, I have a ton of free content and I am happy for people to spread the word. I want everyone to spread the word that is everywhere and that, know, we can create scalable and saleable businesses.

I want the more of the people talk about it, the better it is and in achieving, my mission to make sure we help more wealth in the hands of women. And so I'd be happy to have people use my free content, but I would like. To get credit for it. So I like from the use it with attribution. I would not like someone to take my free content and package it and sell it. So I would like them to use it, but use it in a way that there it's also free non commercial use.

So, when we make it easy for people to license our materials, then they're more likely to, comply with those licenses and not get sneaky about it. So, I do like that. and the other ways is just to have it on a platform that can do that for you, such as if you are a photographer, or you have a course, when you put them on a platform where people can just automatically access it, it will have the terms of how you can use that material right there. They don't have to negotiate anything.

They can see right there. They don't have to. Have a nervous conversation that can just get access to it and use it within, the bounds of that license and then educating the public. It's important that we have these conversations. It's important that if you have a community, especially for those of you who are business coaches for us to talk about how important it is for us to respect each other's intellectual property. And, I know.

Business coaches that you get questions from your clients about, Can I use this book in my course? how do I prevent my, client from your use my materials? can I use this thing off of the Internet? And these are things that we. Can educate ourselves about through things like this to make sure we kind of understand the basics.

No, 1's trying to, make you an IP lawyer, but just to understand the basics of what good intellectual property hygiene is, maybe put it that way to talk to our communities about it as well and keeping records, I wish I had an example, maybe I will try to have an example. The next time I talk about this is that, if you don't register something, like, I'm not going to register this, presentation, when somebody steals it, like, it's good to have a record to show that.

You were the originator of that material. You don't want someone to steal your material, register in the copyright office, and then say, hey, she's infringing on my rights. You want to make sure that you're able to show when something was created, who created it and, have that documentation. Let's say you hired a contractor to create something. So you hired someone to.

create your logo and you think it's original and you're using it, but then they use that same logo with somebody else thinking you're never going to notice. And then you have a conflict, making sure that you have documentation to show that you own something is important. So it's important to keep records, as well, and then limit distribution, back kind of to the DMR, being about where you put things, you there's some places where you have a more sophisticated.

Audience that's unlikely to steal your materials, things that you publish on linkedin, the things you publish on medium, things that you publish. Well, I don't know about YouTube, but, that people kind of understand that they can't steal it may be some other places, where if you publish things that it may be more of a free for all atmosphere.

And it's even possible that it says somewhere in the terms and conditions that anything that you publish here, you give a license to that platform or to that website to use it as it will. It says that in terms of conditions that by publishing something there, you're granting them a license. So you need to be aware of where you're publishing things and what the terms of that. And then actively enforce your rights.

So to that cease and desist letter, if you find someone has stolen your materials and they're using it in a way that you think is a copyright infringement, then you should send a cease and desist letter. it is something that, obviously has more gravity if it comes from a lawyer, but it doesn't have to. there are. examples of cease and desist letters on the Internet. It is on my to do list to have a sample for you to use.

I will, Do that and let you know when I have one of those available for free, to send to the infringer saying, hey, I saw that you have republished my website as your own and it demands that they cease and desist distribution of your materials. And, of course, you reserve your rights in case you need to take it to the next step. Another way is through a takedown notice.

And that is something that you send to the ISP, like, so let's say you see, you're on YouTube and you see that somebody has uploaded a video of yours and so you would send a takedown notice to YouTube and,, they're very clear, like the statute says exactly what. The takedown notice needs to say, and you follow, and the ISP should also have that in their terms of use.

They should also have what you need to do them a takedown notice, who you send it to, and then the ISP is obligated to take to act on that if they don't want to be, accused of covering infringement themselves. And then, if these, kind of less formal, techniques don't work, you've sent your cease and desist, you've sent your takedown notice, someone still continues to infringe, or if there's a habitual or intentional, infringements, then that's time to talk to a lawyer.

again, those would be for things that you'd be willing to pay for someone's legal fees for, lawyers, typically don't work for free. and they typically don't work on contingency basis either. So, it would need to be something that, has the value to you. To enforce those rights, through a use of a lawyer. Now, I mean, there can be, you certainly it can scare people away.

That letter coming from a lawyer can be the, kind of an escalation before you get to the serious legal fees, to get people to stop doing what they're doing. So, again, there's no. Single strategy, there's no, absolutes regarding copyright infringements. It's going to happen by bad actors, but it'll also happen, just through negligence or innocence. that's really what we want to just make sure that we are.

doing what we need to do to protect our rights and reduce the incidence of copyright infringement and the severity when it does happen. So, with that, I would be happy to take any questions. You can pop them into the chat and I'd also love to hear about any experiences that you've had with copyright infringement or any, techniques you've used to prevent it. again, I do this every last Wednesday of the month at noon, Eastern.

So any questions that you have that you didn't have a chance to ask today, please send them to me and I will address them. And also, I'm happy to take suggestions for future. LinkedIn lives or future regular podcast episodes, and I do encourage you to check out the prior 2 episodes that are parts 1 and 2 of the copyright infringement series and also, to get your copy of.

my expertise copyrightable, which is a free assessment that takes you through the process of whether or not something can be protected through copyright law, including, Things like, IA generated content because an essential element for copyright ability is that something is created by a human, but that's just one of many of the elements that need to be analyzed to see if something is eligible for copyright protection. You can get a copy of that on my website, thinkbeyondip. com.

And of course, if we aren't connected, please do connect with me here on LinkedIn. Thanks.