How to protect my written work online

[brad.clark]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Michigan

Hello everyone,

I am a novice author with a few pieces published on my own website. While the website only gets a few hundred views per month, I still want to protect my work.

I do have it for free online (revenue via ads), and want to make sure that I am putting all the necessary precautions in place so that others cannot steal my work and claim it as their own.

Anyone have any advice/reference materials that can instruct me on all there is to do in order to protect my work? I include a "Copyright Brad Clark" at the bottom of each piece - is that sufficient?

Thanks!

 

[BigMouthWino]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Michigan

Hello everyone,

I am a novice author with a few pieces published on my own website. While the website only gets a few hundred views per month, I still want to protect my work.

I do have it for free online (revenue via ads), and want to make sure that I am putting all the necessary precautions in place so that others cannot steal my work and claim it as their own.

Anyone have any advice/reference materials that can instruct me on all there is to do in order to protect my work? I include a "Copyright Brad Clark" at the bottom of each piece - is that sufficient?

Thanks!

Possibly; however, if you truly believe your intellectual property has value and you are interested in protecting it you should consult with an IP attorney.

 

[justalayman]

registering your copyrights affords you certain rights not available if you do not register them. One would be a claim to statutory damages if they are registered. Without registration, you are limited to actual damages. With registration, you also have the right to seek attorney's fees.

additionally, registering your art within 5 years of publication give you a benefit as far as proving ownership. The courts accept registration within that time period as prima facia evidence of ownership.




after that, as far as protecting it;

it is simply a matter of practicing due diligence and if infringement is discovered, taking actions allowed by your rights.


a bit of info for your perusal:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html


at this stage, the only reason I can see needing an attorney would be to assist you in determining the best way to register your copyrights and assist you in doing that if needed.

 

[wendymarlowe]

Disclaimer: I am NOT a lawyer, but I am an author.

The sad truth is, you can't prevent someone from ripping off your work. The best you can hope to do is to prevent someone from making bushels of money off your work - and even that is a full-time job. Plenty of "authors" spend their time stealing other people's books (from their websites or from ebooks) and then listing them on sites like Amazon as their own work, sometimes without even changing the title or the characters' names. Every book published in ebook form shows up on free pirated ebook sites - it's just an unfortunate fact of modern publishing.

As long as you can point to your work having been on your website for a while, you can report plagiarists to sites like Amazon.com and if you're lucky they'll take down the offenders' listings. (They're not terribly reliable about this even for multipublished authors with big publishing house backing, so it's still an iffy proposition.) The good news is, a lot of the time sites will take down the copied works without any questions asked, and the plagiarists rarely fight to get them put back up. If you choose to spend your time tracking down illegal copies of your books, you can certainly do so (and you will find some). In my experience, many of the more blatant pirate ebook sites have no interest in following the law, no matter who tells them to, so there's really no point in chasing down those leads.

As for copyright notices . . . you don't need them, and a copyright notice on an unpublished work is the mark of a newbie author. Feel free to put copyright notices up if you really want to, but you'd probably be better served putting up a common-sense notice to your readers, such as "This is my material - I want you to enjoy reading it, but please don't re-distribute it without my permission."