How to Sink an Online Pirate
By Michael Werner, CEO, Intellectua.com

Article Courtesy of: QualityBooks.com

My wife has never cheated on me. At least not that I know of, or that she's confessed to. But, I've got to tell you, the feeling I had just a couple of days ago was what I would suspect I'd feel like if she ever were to cheat.

You see, I HAD been violated.

On the Internet.

An article that I had written and published on one of my websites, and distributed to a couple of my favorite ezines for publication and distribution, had been copied... literally word-for-word... and placed on another website. All without my knowledge, and all without even the slightest reference to the author (me), my company, or my website.

And, gazowie, was I furious. Imagine... someone taking a piece of work you've spent hours or days (days in my case, as there was a healthy amount of research involved). Just stealing it. Ripping it off. Word-for-word.

I discovered the copyright violation quite by accident, actually. The thief, as it turns out, participates in a couple of the same discussion groups I do. Well, in what's got to be one of the dumbest con moves of the decade, said thief posted an announcement to one of the groups saying he's just added some great new information resource on his site, encouraging all to come have a look. Suspecting nothing, I hopped on over; after all, he was offering information on a topic that was quite close to my heart... I'd just written an article on it, in fact.

I am not a lawyer, and don't pretend to know the in's and out's of copyright law, but I do know this: If you write something original, whether or not you register it with the federal copyright office, you own that work. Period.

And make no mistake about it, in my view, stealing someone's written work is in no way different than walking into someone's house and taking his sofa or silverware or anything else he owns.

Okay, so what happened, and what did I do about the theft?

I decided I'd better calm down first before taking any action. I knew the thief's address (cyber as well as physical), and I was tempted to sue him right then and there. But I didn't.

Instead, I wrote up the situation and sent it around to a few of the discussion groups I'm in, asking for advice. Then I waited.

Finally, after about a day, I sent him the following email:

We believe you or someone else at your website has posted copyrighted material of ours, and we believe of others as well.

Specifically refer to your "Write and submit articles section," where you have lifted an article of ours word-for-word.

You have three choices:

1. Pay one-time usage rights. We will grant you one-time publishing rights whereby you can continue using the material. The cost for these non-exclusive rights is $350. You will need to mail a _certified_ check to be received in our offices no later than 5:00 pm, Friday 17 March 2000. Mail to:

Legal Affairs Department
Intellectua.com, LLC
4201 Wilson Blvd #110-229
Arlington, VA 22203-1859

If you do NOT remit payment or follow Choice 2, see Choice 3.

2. Remove and post apology. Alternatively, you can remove all copyrighted material (we are informing others who we believe have also been infringed) within 24 hours. Then, on your site AND in all ezines and discussion lists where you have promoted your "marketing tips," you will make a written apology and give the proper link information for the proper owners of the materials.

If you do NOT follow the steps in choices 1 or 2, see Choice 3.

3. Do nothing. In the event that you do not follow the actions in choices 1 or 2, we will sue you for copyright violation. In addition, we will inform all others we know to have been violated, we will work with your ISP to get you removed from the Internet, and we will forward details of the violation to all known copyright violation authorities, both print and Internet.

I received an email response from him within an hour after sending the above letter.

What to know what he said?

He denied having any such content (come on, pal, it's right in my face), and since I offered no proof of copyright to him, he wasn't doing anything.

I then sent him one more email reiterating our intentions to sue him for copyright infringement if he did not immediately remove the material.

Within an hour, the material had been removed from his site.

And, that did feel good. The next time I saw my wife, though, I did have to ask her if she'd been cheating on me. Of course, she said "no."


Michael Werner is the former President and founder of two-time INC. 500 company, InfoSource, Inc. He is currently the CEO of Intellectua.com, a publisher of how-to, business, computing, and Internet ebooks and tools. You can subscribe to the company’s award-winning, all original-content ezine, The DirtSmart Netpreneur, featuring weekly news and tools for the small enterprise and home-based business webmaster. Subscribe at: http://www.dirtsmart.com/cgi-bin/sub.cgi?aaa

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