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Posted: 06 Feb 2009 06:05 AM PST

Today Gary from DevOracles (follow him at @methode) shares some tips on copyright, blogging and content theft. Tomorrow Gary will return with a second post where he shares how he goes about getting copyrighted material used without permission by others removed.

First of all, who am I? I’m just another blogger, call me John Doe if you like, I’m nothing more than You or any other average blogger. I own a blog, I try to write on daily basis and always try to help others with reviews and IT&C related advice.

My experience with copyright started a few months ago, when I searched on Google to see what other bloggers are saying about a specific notebook. As most of the Google users, I clicked the top result and one of my articles showed up. But not on my blog. It was the exact copy of my article, the links, the images, the typos were all original, except the domain name.

Headed back to Google and started to search for full sentences from my posts and in no time I got more annoyed than I ever was: the search results showed me that dozens of my posts are copied as they are, without any modification, without a backlink to the original post and often these outranked my original posts.

I decided that I will not forgive this and will start a personal war against these websites. This is when I started to learn what is copyright, how can I copyright my content, to decide which license will best suit my needs, to write a proper Terms of Service and Fair Use Policy (TOS & FUP), register my work at a copyright office and lastly when all these were done, to force the infringes to remove my content from their websites.

First, what is copyright? Copyright is a form of protection –usually a document, — offered for the authors of intellectual work for example a blogger, which proves that the author is the real owner of the work and grants exclusive rights of selling and reproduction for the him or her. During the copyrighting process with the US Copyright Office, the author has to provide usually a “hard copy” of the work which is going to be copyrighted. This copy of the work can be for example a CD-ROM, a DVD or even a flash drive, which contains the work. If mailing these is complicated due to the big distance or other things, the copyright office offers FTP storage as well which simplifies the storing of the work. This copy will be deposited in a safe place and will be the evidence that the author is the real owner of the work and has all the necessary rights of reproduction or selling the work, and it can be used as evidence when copyright infringement occurs even in court.

That said, let’s see the Creative Commons Licenses. There’s a quite extraordinary fuss about Creative Commons, yet, I believe few of those who use the licenses issued by this non-profit organization effectively understand and realize what’s the license is about. It’s used on mammoth websites like Wikipedia, Flickr and even on the new US president’s blog (is that a blog?), Change.gov.

Types of the licenses vary depending on the needs of the author of the work, and they can be

Attribution - when the work can be used by others only if, for example the third party links back to the original work
Share-alike - if the work is reproduced by a 3rd party, it has to use the same license. For example a work copyrighted with this license, shall not be reproduced by a 3rd with Attribution license
No derivative - the work shall not be modified in any way, but may be reproduced in integrity
Non-commercial - the work shall not be used by a 3rd party for commercial purposes. For example, the 3rd party may not put your work on a CD-ROM and sell it on Wall Street

So far so good, I guess this was known by everyone. But did you know that even if you put all of these licenses on your website, the content will not be automatically copyrighted?

The Creative Common licenses are not meant to copyright the author’s content, but to grant or deny permissions regarding the use of his or her content by third parties. And that’s all. Nothing more, nothing less. Take these license as a few paragraphs of a properly written Terms of Service like CNN’s, it functions on top of an existent copyright but alone is just a nicely formed letter which covers what can and what can not be done with a specific intellectual work.

So, to be on point, if you use Creative Commons license on your website, that doesn’t mean that you’re safe and you can sue anyone who steals your work. You still have to copyright your work in a way which confers bulletproof protection, because if you have only a Creative Common license on your blog, you will much likely fail in front of a court.

Note that I said “much likely”. I said that because there was known case when a work which used Creative Common license and stolen by a 3rd party was defended in front of a court with success. But you should not rely on one single case.

But then how to copyright easily the content? And if possible, how to copyright your content for free? No need for Googleing and browsing 34 affiliate marketer’s website, I will answer. While content theft is sadly a concern for most of the bloggers and seemingly no country does anything to stop this, if you live in one of the countries which signed the Berne Copyright Convention you shouldn’t fear a second.

The explanation is fairly simple: in short, this treaty says that as soon as you publish an article on your blog, that’s automatically copyrighted, and yes, you are the copyright holder. You don’t have to provide anything fancy license or codes on your blog though those help if you arrive in court with a content thief.

As I said, it’s not needed but you should bring in everyone’s attention that the content they read IScopyrighted in the year when they read it and that YOU are the copyright holder. This compressed in one line should look like this:

Of course even though I wrote that in this post, that doesn’t mean that, even though the article is written by me, the copyright is mine! It’s Darren’s because I transferred all my rights. (And now publicly stated this, too)

If you don’t want to use a Creative Common license on top of this copyright, you can spice the above line with the “All Rights Reserved” text. This way you expressed clearly that You have all the rights.

So, how do you know whether the country you are resident in signed the Berne Copyright Convention or not? I don’t know better location of this information, but this document, Circular 38a - International Copyright Relations of the United States which displays all the countries the United States signed this treaty with. If your country is in the list, you have automatic protection, provided by your own government who signed this treaty to protect Your rights.

Noteworthy, that this copyright expires 70 years after the author’s death, but if you don’t care about your great-grandson’s financial status, much likely this license is the best for you.

Now let’s see the Copyright issued by the US Copyright Office. And more importantly why do I mention this office and not the Zimbabwe Copyright Office, for the matter of the example.

Firstly, there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions of blogs on Blogger and Wordpress.org. Most (if not all) of these organizations’ servers are situated in the United States thus when you publish a post, the place where it’s published is the United States. This applies to any blog which is served by servers located in the United States, not only the servers which are under the above mentioned organizations’ control.

Secondly, the United States joined two important copyright treaties which offers bilateral copyright protection for the author of the copyrighted work in most of the foreign countries. I say most, because there are countries which at the moment of this post didn’t join any of these treaties. To list some of the countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, North Korea, etc. but there are only a few (see Circular 38a - International Copyright Relations of the United States for a complete list).

A huge difference between the Berne Convention and the US Copyright is, that during the registration process with the US Copyright Office, the author has to provide a copy of his work for the office which will be stored as evidence. This will come handy when the author has to prove its rights in a court, for example.

This governmental copyright protection was tested many times in US and international courts and since a governmental office watched the back of the author, the vast majority of these cases were won by the copyright owner.

Noteworthy, that this service offered by the US government is not free. There’s a price for the protection, but is fair and acceptable. At the moment of this post this fee is a stunning, one-time $35 (USD).

As a final paragraph, which shouldn’t be considered advice. I chose the service offered by the United States Copyright Office because I trust them more and I consider a very smart move that I have to provide the copy of my work. It’s up to you what will you going to use but be aware of the fact that when you or an attorney which acts on your behalf contacts the service provider of the copyright infringes, this may ask for evidence.

But this is something for the next part of this article (stay tuned for tomorrow) when I will talk in a less formal manner about the procedure of effectively fighting copyright infringes.

Note: Nothing in this article should be considered a legal advice. Problogger.net and its affiliates should not be held responsible for any loss caused by misuse of the information presented in this article. If you need copyright related legal advice, please consult a specialized attorney.

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Learning From Free Content… And why it’s Not Always Enough

Posted: 05 Feb 2009 05:05 PM PST

Recently Sheryl Schuff contacted me to thank me for referring her to a paid course here on ProBlogger. Her email came a few minutes after I read a comment from another reader saying that they’d ‘never pay for information online’ because ‘everything is available for free already’. I thought that the striking difference between the comment and the email called for a little unpacking so I emailed Sheryl back and asked if she’d be interested in writing about her decision of paying for the course and to talk about why she felt it was worthwhile. Here’s what she came back with.

I'm a big advocate of learning as much as you can from free content, especially when you venture into a new area, particularly in business. I say this both as a producer of free content (articles, reports, blog posts) who encourages entrepreneurs to bootstrap their businesses using free software and services and also as a consumer of free content.

I usually have three or four dozen library books checked out at any one time (almost entirely non-fiction) and I currently have 60 RSS feeds flowing into my Google Reader. I subscribe to (and regularly read) several dozen blogs and ezines.

Every year, I meet some of the continuing professional education requirements for my CPA license by attending free on-line seminars. As helpful as I have found all the varied sources of free information to be, they're not always enough.

Most of the free on-line resources I've used have done a good job of discussing what needs to be done in a specific subject area. Many have also included explanations of why certain things need to be done.

But let's face it. We can't expect the authors and consultants to give away all the specific details of how to do things. For one thing, if technology is involved, the how changes pretty rapidly these days. The experts spend a lot of time on research to keep themselves current and competent. They explore the vast amount of information available in their topic area, aggregate it, evaluate it, filter it, and package it in ways that make it easy for others to actually use it. They transform raw data into knowledge.

I know firsthand how much effort is involved to keep current in my field (business startup and taxes), so I'm willing to pay other experts to bring me up to speed in their niches.

It was a no-brainer for me to join the Teaching Sells program when Darren emailed his list to tell them about the launch in October 2007. In 2008, I extended my charter membership and then jumped at the offer to turn it into a lifetime membership.

Brian Clark and Tony Clark developed some amazing courses to teach folks how to create interactive learning environments and membership sites. They shared philosophy, strategy, business models, and methods of content creation. They produced text, audio, and video showing their students in great detail how to use various software and services to develop their new sites.

I learned a lot about educational psychology and the tools available to me to build membership sites. And I also became part of the Teaching Sells community by participating in the forums that were part of the program. The information shared there and the other students I met were every bit as valuable as the course material.

Just to give you an example of how one thing leads to another (and another)…someone at Teaching Sells mentioned the forums at StartUpNation as a place for me to hang out to see what new entrepreneurs were talking about…which lead me to information about HARO…which led to my being interviewed by Donna Amos…which led to my being asked to participate as the tax expert for the International Association of Entrepreneurs…which led me back to Twitter and all sorts of new connections…and a reconnection with Darren…and, well, you get the idea.

I've used what I learned at Teaching Sells to develop a couple of membership programs, the first of which I'll be launching very soon. I'm also discussing two other possibilities with two different potential partners. And late last year I joined Brian Clark & Jon Morrow's Partnering Profits program, an investment that I know will help take my business to the next level.

As you plan for your personal and professional development this year, I encourage you to think about what motivates you to take action and stay focused.

Are you the type that pays more attention to something you've paid for than something that's given to you for free? Do you stick to your fitness resolutions better when you prepay for ten sessions with a personal trainer than when you try to do it alone? I know I concentrate more on the material in tax training courses that I pay several hundred dollars for than the ones I get for free.

Do you understand how much time you save when you invest in training courses from experts in their fields? And how much more likely you are to get current, credible information from paid programs than from free sources?

Someone who wrote a free report last year on how to use WordPress, for example, doesn't have much incentive to update the report every time a new WordPress upgrade comes out. Premium content producers like Brian Clark and Tony Clark listen to feedback from their students and spend months revising and reorganizing their courses to keep current and provide superior customer satisfaction.

Read their free report. If you're interested in creating information products or any type of continuity program, consider joining Teaching Sells when it reopens (update: it just has reopened for the next day or two to take new members).