Copy Cats: How To Protect Your Copyrights
The W3 is a lawless environment with lots of bad guys out there and virtually no law enforcement. It’s up to individual site owners to protect what belongs to them. And that includes your site’s content. With web content increasing in value all of the time, stealing content has become an all-too-common practice.
So, what can you do about it? How can you check to see if your content has been lifted by some light-fingered site owner too lazy or cheap to create his own site copy. Let’s examine this phenomenon and see if you’ve already been victimized.
You Can’t Stop It!
That’s right. You can’t stop some crook from stealing what rightfully belongs to you. If it appears in a web browser, it can be copied and used elsewhere, i.e., stolen. However, there are things you can do once you’ve discovered that information from your site …

Web Copyright: Who Owns What?
Trying to figure out web copyright law is like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. It’s a topsy-turvy world in which media content giant Viacom (owners of cable’s Comedy Central) is suing You Tube for copyright infringement for displaying clips from Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and from “Daily Show” spin-off, “The Colbert Report.”
Interesting case with allegations flying from both well-funded complainant and defendant with accusations from You Tube owner, Google, that Viacom is posting its own clips on the site for marketing purposes. Hmmmm.
Same deal with the music industry that claims You Tube is making money off artists without paying licensing fees. You can see concert clips of music stars free on You Tube and the musicians, and their record companies, want their take even though these clips actually promote sales. You see Clapton play “Layla” in concert and you …