Thursday, June 14, 2007 Toral: War against copyright violators By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
LAST week, the Philippine Internet Re-view blog (http://philippine-internetreview. blogspot.com) became a victim of another blog whose domain name was owned by someone in Thailand. It republished several posts without permission. To make it worse, this is the second time it happened involving the same domain name owner.
I am very protective of this blog because its articles were part of a big documentary capturing Philippine Internet history.
For those of you who became victims of copyright violators as well, here are protective steps I’ve taken that can be of use to you too.
Write to the copyright violator. No need to be combative, just claim ownership of the content by giving the website address of the original article published in your site and asking them to remove it from their end. If you allow them to republish an article, just ask them to attribute it (they should place “republished with permission by copyright owner (you)” on the page). To make this effective, visit www.netsol.com and click on the WhoIs feature. This will allow you to find out the identity of the domain name owner and copy-furnish them too.
Write to the web host. When viewing the WhoIs details of a domain name, you’ll find out where they are web hosted too. Use that information to visit their web host and file a complaint against the website and provide the website address of the articles that they copied from you without permission. In the past two cases, I succeeded in this level and got the entire website suspended.
Attack their source of income. If you are dealing with a violator who is serial in nature, committing rampant acts while transferring from one domain name and web host to another, you can also contact its advertisers informing them of its bad practices. If the violator is using Google AdSense, you write to its support unit and file a formal complaint against the website, asking for their account to be terminated permanently.
Inform other victims. Most violators are not only illegally copying your content but those of others too. Through search engine, you can search for the article title and find the original author. Getting them involve and follow the same action you are taking can strengthen the complaint against the copyright violator.
Original content creators should take their intellectual property rights seriously and not be selective in attacking copyright violators.
At my end, I already decide to change the order of dealing with violators by attacking their source of income first and then proceed in having their website shut down. This way, chances of them committing the same act will be minimized. It will also give them a very painful lesson and cause them to suffer for a long time for their irresponsible actions.
I believe that with the Internet being here for more than 10 years, ignorance is not an acceptable excuse anymore for committing copyright violation. All of us should exercise our rights in fighting those who don’t have any respect and even dare to profit from it.
