>Home>Craft Ideas>Letters>Copyright Infringement

Copyright Infringement

How to Fight Back

How to Protect Your Work against Copyright Infringement

If your work appears on the Internet, you need to know how to protect it from theft.

I’ve written many articles abouthonoring other artists’ copyrights. Now here’s one from the other side of the table.

What can you do to protect your work from copyright infringement if you craft for profit?

Since you’re reading The Artful Crafter – “All you need to know to craft for fun and profit” – you’re likely a small businessperson like Angelique or me and don’t have a team of lawyers at your beck and call.

---

Hi,

First of all excuses, my English is not so good. I'm from Belgium, where we speak French and Dutch.

I am the distributor of Vitriflore - what you call fun film.

I didn’t use the product in the 70s but since I’m selling it, I hear a lot of people telling me how much fun they had with it as children and they buy it for their own child! Boy or girl!

The product is still produced in Europe and was discovered by the grandfather of the present manufacturer. In Germany they started to make this product but the last one has stopped about 10 years ago.

The market for this product is too small to produce cheaply in large lots (like a lot of handicraft products!).

Our company does it for the fun, for the respect of the owner’s grandfather and because of the beauty of the finish from this product!

Yes indeed it smelt as acetone and I remember the balloon paste with this smell!

I made a website for this product with how to use it, a lot of creative ideas, professional photos and translated it all into four languages: French, Dutch, English and Spanish!

This required a lot of time and money, only to discover that sites in the USA are selling a similar product with my text and photos!

Because of that I removed most of the content from my site and we provide a CD with more all the photos, ideas and more with each product purchase.

Greetings from Belgium,

Angelique

---

Please don’t apologize for your English. You speak French, Dutch and a good bit of English. That’s two more languages than most people I know!

I’m so sorry to hear of your bad experience on the Internet. It is very easy for people to steal content and claim it as their own. I frequently find my articles and photos on other sites.

I have to tell you that you did absolutely the worst thing you could have done by taking YOUR content down because someone else was using it. In English we have two phrases that come to mind. I think you’ll get the gist of them.

What you did was “shut the barn door after the horses were stolen” and “cut off your nose to spite your face”.

By the first, I mean that your work was already stolen. So what good did it do to remove it from YOUR site?

By the second, I mean that by taking your work down in anger or dismay, you actually hurt yourself (and helped the offender).

Maybe you have repeat customers who already know your product and service, so they don’t need to see photos and tutorials. But you won’t attract many new customers with a craft site that has no photos, no project ideas, but just the promise of a CD of unknown quality with any product purchase.

What to Do Now

I don’t know how far your Vitriflore product can be shipped.

Many countries have tight regulations on shipping volatile substances. Do you know your market reach?

Does it include the United States where the sites you mentioned sell their fun film?

If your market is exclusively Europe, you are not in direct competition with the U.S. company that sells fun film anyway. If you are certain that you own the rights to the content you took down, put it back up. If the photos came from a friend of a friend and you’re not sure who actually took them, be very careful.

You could be the one accused of copyright infringement.

For a marketing website to be successful, it has to be dynamic, colorful and full of relevant content.

Protecting Your Original Content

There are things you can do to protect your original work.

1. Have a copyright statement on your website like we have at the bottom of every page of The Artful Crafter.

2. Put a copyright watermark on every photo like you can see on the Scrap Girls products here. With “Scrap Girls” lightly embossed all across the product, legitimate customers can still see the product clearly but no one can steal the photo and use it.

Once Your Work has Been Stolen

3. When you find a site that has duplicated your content, go to your Google search box, type in “whois” and the website’s name. You should be able to find domain records and a contact person for the website. Write the person a firmly worded email asserting your ownership of the material and demanding that they take the content down or give you credit and provide a link to your site.

People who are usually honest will be embarrassed at having been caught being dishonest. They may also fear legal action.

Unfortunately I have to tell you that most of the content thieves are not honest people and will probably ignore you. Try resending the note in a few days, in case the first one didn’t get through.

4. After a reasonable amount of time with no response either by email or removal of the content, you need to track down the website’s ISP (Internet Service Provider). This can also be done through searching for domain records.

If the ISP is located in a country that subscribes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), send an email to the ISP describing the copyright infringement. Tell them that under the DCMA, it is their responsibility to remove the stolen content.

Most ISPs take this very seriously and will respond quickly with a request for details of the infringement and a statement from you, under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner and have not given or sold anyone rights to the material.

The above are all steps you can take that will cost you nothing except a little time. If none of the above work, your only recourse is to hire a copyright lawyer.

Put Things in Perspective

I hope my thoughts help you put your particular problem into perspective so you can decide a course of action. I suspect that the U.S. sites are not cutting into your (European) market share.

If you can’t succeed in getting the U.S. sites to remove your content, you just need to move on and take care of yourself and your business. I speak from experience, believe me.

I urge you to get the pizzazz back into your site. I can almost guarantee your sales will go back up. And you’ll feel better. Like Ivana Trump once said, “Success is the best revenge”.

Good luck!

---

P.S. I should mention that I speak from experience. I just went through this entire process. The ISP responded quickly after my initial attempts to contact the offender failed. The ISP investigated and took down the stolen article within a week.

  |Top | Letters | Crafts | Home |