By 3210 Consulting in cooperation with CoopyRite

If you are displaying copyrighted material to a general audience (such as on your website), copyright infringement prevention is a necessary part of authoring. This is extremely important if you are also investing in some form of exposure strategy such as (but not limited to) search engine optimization, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisement, press coverage, and almost all forms of offline advertising that promote your website address.

It should be noted that plagiarized works, defined here as "copied works that have been altered and presented as being a new owner's works", can be much more difficult to detect (thus protect). So please bear that in mind.

There are many country specific registration processes, web-based tools and desktop applications that can assist in protecting your exclusive rights, detection of infringement, and preventing subsequent occurrences. Unfortunately, there is no absolute way (short of never displaying your works to the general public) to prohibit infringement.

The best "preventive measure", though is providing public notice that you are serious about protecting your copyrights. Additionally, registration of your copyrighted material is most desirable as such forwarding thinking provides additional legal coverage. If a work is registered before an act of infringement occurs, you are entitled to actual damages and up to $150,000 in statutory damages ( United States specific - may vary in other countries) and recovery of attorney fees, even if you can not prove actual damages.

Registration information:

• Canada – https://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/copyright-filing/application/engdoc/cp_filing_form-e.html
• United Kingdom - http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/register/
• United States - http://www.copyright.gov/register/literary.html

For other countries that you reside in, search Google under "copyright registration" + your county name for registering your works.

Alternatively, (since there is a fee associated with copyright registration of approximately $50 USD for each original literary works), time-stamped, printed hardcopies and digital archives provide an irrefutable foundation and chronological history for all copyright infringement claims. Proactive use of some effective tools can assist in building a solid foundation that can make infringement claims less of a necessary chore:

United States Copyright Office

How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work – A 12-page review for methods of approaching a copyright investigation. Anyone serious about preserving your exclusive copyrights on authored materials – this is a "MUST READ" .

Additionally, The United States Copyright Office offers a search service for investigating whether a work is under copyright protection and, if so, the facts of the copyright. While the fee is $150 per hour or fraction thereof , an inexpensive way to avoid a costly aftermath is to innovatively use the free estimate of the total search fee provided by the office. Given the nature of most web-based literary works – the usual “search for” is often limited to the company or author's name. If they have no record of the name the search is completed in mere minutes (e.g. $15.00 or less).

The Internet Archive

http://www.archive.org The Internet Archive is an Internet library that retrieves web-based documents and archive versions changes over time in digital format. Your copyrighted works are time-stamped according to the date The Internet Archive retrieved the pages from your website. Thus you have an additional documented history, represented by an unbiased third party, to bolster the originality of your digital works.

Copyscape

http://www.copyscape.com Copyscape developed by Indigo Stream Technologies Ltd., is a web-based copy detection tool used to find a matched version of your archived web page within Google. The free version allows 50 searches/month/domain and returns potential infringing copies on your authored works.

Copyscape also provides more robust paid services such as autonomous tracking past infringement cases and timed scans for seeking out new occurrences of infringements.

Plagiarism Checker

http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/ is a free web-based phrase match tool that allows finding all occurrences of a text string in search engines. While this can be accomplished merely by going to each search engine itself, Plagiarism Checker allows searching both Google and Yahoo from the same interface and also interfaces with Google Alerts (See below).

Google Alerts

http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en - Google Alert system is a powerful supporter of copyright infringement policing. Using a descriptive phrase from your copyrighted material in the field provided (preferable “quoted” so to return a result of only your own web page (as if no infringement has occurred as yet), Google will automatically email you when a new occurrence appears in its archive.

Google Desktop

http://desktop.google.com/ - While Google Desktop doesn't have infringement or plagiarism detection capability, it does merge all versions of your copyright material (your original word processor documents, your web browser cache and your search history) together as a convenient singular archive. This is enormously valuable for creating an irrefutable foundation and chronological history of your copyrighted works from initial draft to final word processor versions, initial to current web versions, and other digital formats such as PDF, etc.

Domain Tools

http://www.domaintools.com/ - Domain Tools is a useful tool for determining who your alleged infringer is. A wide array of tools are available including, but not limited to, domain owner (possibly contact info), domain registrar, host service (contact info), nameservers, IP, history of ownership, important listings (DMOZ), etc.