By 3210 Consulting in cooperation with CoopyRite

What a business owner may not know about copyright protection and infringement.

"Locks are meant to keep "honest people honest"... you will however never prevent a thief from stealing no matter how hard you try..."

Copyrights is defined as: The legal exclusive right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work. ( United States Copyright Law: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ )

So what is copyright infringement?

Generally, under the law, one who engages in any of the aforementioned without obtaining the original copyright owner's permission may be liable for infringement.

The oldest precedent of copyright infringement was trialed in 546 AD where St. Columba, an Irish missionary was found guilty for copying a Latin Biblical work. The judge and local king stated, "As the calf belongs to the cow, so the copy belongs to the book."

Nonetheless, it took another 1155 years before written law was to match this king's visionary stance. In 1701, the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Anne, forbidding unauthorized persons from printing or importing another person's book.

The United States Copyright Office suggests. "You may wish to seek professional legal advice from a copyright attorney and to discuss your legal options."

The United States Copyright Office serves primarily as an office of record and is not charged with enforcing the law it administers. Copyright infringement is generally a civil matter, which the copyright owner must pursue in a court of law. Under certain circumstances, the infringement may also constitute a criminal misdemeanor or felony, which would be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sounds expensive! Protection of “rights” usually is – there is much at stake and not just your own rights but the rights of the alleged infringer.

…and then came the Internet.

While the general principles of copyrights and the protection from infringement have not changed in three millennia, the communication medium (The Internet) has dramatically change. Copyrighted material can now be freely accessed by a global audience thus a need arose to create new laws to protect copyright in the digital age. THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT (DMCA) OF 1998 reshaped the future of protecting an author's exclusive rights. Since that time, many other countries including Canada , most of the European Union, Australia and many others have enacted their own legislation based on the original framework of DMCA.

The DMCA is a bill designed to bring copyright law up to date with digital age. In part, to aid the protection of digital works and outlaw the manufacture of, or "trafficking" in, technologies capable of circumventing technical protection measures.

Additionally, DMCA Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation (Section 512) provides exemptions for certain online service providers with a complete bar on monetary damages (a safe harbor) in the event of an alleged copyright infringement occurs.

Search engines and web hosting companies are the two most prominent service providers having a safe harbor against copyright liability so long as they, on being notified of a claimed infringement, adhere to the safe harbor guidelines and expeditiously remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing.

What does means to the average business that has developed search engine exposure using their own copyrighted material where someone else may be infringing on your exclusive rights? You have a variety of options that enable you to prevent alleged infringers from profiting without the continuous need to invoke court action.