How To Get Copyright Protection For Your Digital Work
You spend endless sleepless nights working out to shape your master piece and then you are taken by surprise when you see how your work is being distributed without your permission. Well there are ways out there to protect your piece of work when you share it online, the ways to get copyright protection for your digital work,i.e. your blog,music,art work .
We would also discuss what to do when you find someone practicing plagiarism.
But before that lets have a brief understanding of copyright itself.
So what gets copyright protection?
Copyright is a fully automatic enforcement. It exists as soon as any intellectual creation is put down in a tangible form. It means that the work should be in some physical form for it can be stored, seen,viewed.
Your piece of work should also follow these two essentials: 1.) It should be original, that is your work should be truly a piece of your mind and not copied. 2.) You should be able to verify that you were the original creator of the work,i.e. if you disclose your idea to someone and he or she puts it in a tangible form earlier that you then he or she is able to claim for rights and not you.
So before moving ahead to get a copyright protection ensure following:
Your work is original
your work is in a tangible form(written,recorded)
you have proof that it was created by you
So what are the ways to get copyright protection for Digital work ?
Well there are broadly speaking two ways 1.)Paid 2.) Free or open source.
Using
DMCA(Digital Millennium Copyright Act ) to enforce copyright protection.
DMCA is an US based copyright law .The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalize the act of copyright infringement and enforces digital rights management or DRM.
You can get yourself registered at
http://www.dmca.com.
They offer various measures to counter copyright infringement including legal actions as well.DMCA saves you time and money. They are also offering Free accounts with limited features.
So how does DMCA removes contents from websites ?
Well DMCA is a reputed organization with a troop of well versed legal professionals and they have direct connections to online industry leaders at the hosting and ISP levels. they simply contact them to get it removed.
Using Creative Commons license to get copyright protection.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization , devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. With a Creative Commons license you can decide which rights of your work you want to preserve and which you would like to share.
There are six major licenses of the Creative Commons
1. Attribution (CC-BY): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation
2. Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) : This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This is the same license that Wikipedia uses.
3. Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND):This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
4. Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC):This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial
5.Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA):This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
6.Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND): This is the most restrictive license of all it only allows to share the material as long as they credit you.
So what to do if my work has already been copied on some website :
Well if you know that your work has already been copied and you come across any such website then you can follow following steps:
If it’s a website then you can file for them to be banned from Google and other Search Engines to do so follow this link Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Google.
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