The wild wild Web, where copyright is becoming an oft-repeated word

I read a post at a discussion forum—the author found a Web site had copied her content verbatim. She contacted the owner of the site, who basically told her to shove it—there was nothing she could do. The site owner did remove the content, however. In August, I wrote a column about a lawsuit filed by an author who took issue with a bad review of his book. The reviewer didn’t just bash the book; illustrations from the work were reproduced. The author had provided the book, so the case isn’t black and white.

In a perfect world, no one would lift your content without asking. But people do. One reason I added the ‘Copyscape’ banner to both my sites involves providing notice that I do check for copied content. Copyscape works beautifully to this end.

Technically, you don’t have to officially register a work to protect it. The U.S. Copyright Office Web site notes:

No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.

Here’s the note referenced above:

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time.

It is a good idea when you post to your blog or Web site to add a copyright notice, and it’s an even better idea to file the forms to protect your work.

And if you have your eye on sharp content written by another, ask before you lift. Chances are if you run a quality site, you’ll receive permission unless you’re asking a large commercial concern. And always, if you’re given permission, be mannerly and include a link to the site where the work was first featured.

There’s an excellent site explaining the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, organized by the Association of Research Libraries. This government act offers some protection for your Web content, and restricts use of your content to fair use guidelines, including the amount of content in relation to the whole work. Fine to lift a line or two when you’re reviewing a book or poem. Not so fine to lift the whole item.

Meanwhile, you can drop your URL in at Copyscape to see if your work is being used without your knowledge.

©KayBDay/2007

Another lawsuit in the blogosphere, this one over evolution (sort of)

Fellow American Society of Journalists and Authors member Joshua Berman has called our attention to a post at boingbong.net, wherein there’s a revelation about a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris being sued, along with Seed Media, for a negative book review.

The professor ripped into a book by Stuart Pivar, who has morphed from author to plaintiff. Pivar’s case was filed August 16 in the New York Southern District Court. Pivar’s suit alleges assault, libel and slander.

I take small comfort in the fact I predicted lawsuits in cyberspace would increase. I attributed my prediction to technology and intellectual property rights. However, I am adding the proliferation of lawyers as an additional cause of this phenomenon. In my post, I even alluded to libel and slander. Sink me, I'm psychic.

I guess I could read the professor’s reviews and maybe even look at the book, but I don’t place much faith in anyone who tells me there’s a definite answer (or even a half-witted answer) for how we all got here and why we look like we do and why if we’re so smart we pay for water in little plastic bottles. My faith in religion and science both have declined rather steeply in recent years. Science can’t cure a common cold and religion can’t cure the darkness of the human heart. Besides, I’m a poet and I prefer mystery to definitive answers on any given day.

The professor says the author submitted the book for review. So if I were the judge (and most of them, sad to say, do not have an abundance of common sense), I would nix the suit in a heartbeat. You send someone a book for review, you take what you get and act like a big boy. In addition, the publicity is likely to benefit both the book and the professor, so they’ll both be winners in a sense.

Last time I looked, we still had a semblance of freedom of speech in this great country. Hopefully, the judge in the case will be aware of that and act accordingly.

Follow the links from the original boingboing post to read the reviews, comments and lots of other stuff about how 10-legged spiders have nothing to do with collapsed coelenterates and other really juicy matters.

Celebrate the trendy preoccupation of media and masses, not to mention the courts. Science now reigns over Mount Olympus, Valhalla and anywhere else a deity can plop his feet. Or his theory.

(~~Photo of Southern Black Widow courtesy of Florida Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services~~)
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