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Copyright And Infringement

Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Legal Survival Guide

Craig Heidemann

Copyright And Infringement

Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Legal Survival Guide

Craig Heidemann

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Lesson Info

13. Copyright And Infringement

Lesson Info

Copyright And Infringement

and payment was successful. So now look look where I'm at, I'm back at E. C. O. Copyright dot gov. I'm happy to be here. Right, what's my next button continue? So let's rock it over here, click the continue button. Um What's it say? Upload deposit. Now look they're gonna take jpeg gifts uh PSD s tiffs, a bunch of old file formats that nobody even uses anymore. The government will take those. Uh I don't think they'll take pings or some other things like that. But J pegs are great and and now I'm gonna do click on the upload deposit button. So yeah now you can mail a disk in at this point. If this upload doesn't work for you, you can print a shipping insert and you can mail a disc in. But your copyright registration won't exist until they actually get the work entered into the system. Mind work is going to be registered today. If I mailed it to D. C. Today would be two days mail time plus. however long it takes their people to enter it. How you think that worked in the shutdown? I don't ...

know what the copyright office did or didn't do. Um but all I have to do here is click on browse, navigate over here to Creative Life Alcorn contact sheet three. Remember I put them all in one file, this is like your zip file. Think of this as your zip file with your eight million images in it. I'm going to click on that and drum roll. Please submit files to copyright office. You are required to complete. Golly, I got to have a brief title. How about Alcorn Con fact sheet three. Drum roll. Please submit warning. Please make sure you have selected the correct files I did. Now if you send a picture of your mother at thanksgiving and that's not what you intended to send, that's what you obviously would have a problem in your registration and it would be invalid. Uh And you'd have to re register it. They won't know. They do not look at your pictures. They don't care if your pictures are good. They don't care if your pictures are bad. They don't care if your pictures are unoriginal. They don't care if your pictures are infringing works, if someone else there is no examiner that looks at these to determine anything about their quality, they would register. I mean if you can figure I if you send him anything on a disk that was in jpeg format, they scan it to make sure there's no viruses on it and then it's registered and it goes into the system So it looks like in 2:47. If all goes well. Um we're gonna be in good shape. All right, I am done. And um within about a month I will probably maybe less. I'll get that certificate in the mail. Let's go back to the power point and I'll show you what is actually going to come back in the mail. This is an actual certificate of registration of mine for some published works that I had. Um I think I called it bah Koven wedding. Uh They give you a registration number and you have to have this before you file suit. Why do I have it? Well, I gave my client her personal license to give her pictures two to use them for personal purposes. I found that this venue That charged me 500 bucks, charged me, I have a license. Charge me to shoot at their property. Um had obtained these pictures illegally from my client who mistakenly didn't give didn't know that. She should have given them the permission took these pictures and put them all over their website after charging me to go make the pictures there. Okay. Didn't call me. Didn't ask me no photo credit. I don't want a photo credit. I just want paid um put them all over the website. So now I had unpublished pictures. They put them up all over their website. What can we do have been infringed? Help me. I've been infringed. Well the first thing I did because these pictures were previously unpublished. They didn't exist in uh an album. They didn't exist in a book. They were my unpublished pictures. Pictures. I'd put them on a cd which is not publication. And I gave them to one person. Not everybody in the world I registered him, got my certificate back. The next thing we can do. Um Yeah. No no no no no no. Is make copies of the infringing work. So do screen captures of the website. Like crazy. Make sure you write the date on it. Make sure it's an infringement research the infringer. This is the part about making sure that they have money and make sure that you file suit within three years. You have three years from the last act of infringement to file suit. All right. Now, before we sue, there's other fun things that you can do to infringers to protect your work. Um the first choice that you have is you can take, uh, the approach that I'm not really into lawsuits. I just don't want to do anything. You know, it's great that my works out there. I really like the fact that it's on this other person's website. I'm going to tell everybody that that's my work. I've never been on anybody is website before and I'm just excited to be out there. No, you can request a photo credit. Hey, I noticed my pictures on your website. That's great. Can you just put, you know, Apple Studios photography on there? Give me a photo credit. No, you can prepare a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice The D M. C. A is a fantastic law that gives us all kinds of fun opportunities to take the infringers infringers website down. You send this letter to google, you guys know how to go to who is dot com and figure out who hosts the domain for folks websites and they list addresses on there and you actually have to do a little bit of research to find the right address for the domain host. You send them a letter you send, google a letter. There's nothing like taking everybody's S E. O rankings and just eliminating them by taking their whole website down. It's a powerful tool. Once you've been stolen from, um you prepare this DMC a takedown letter and you send it to everybody that hosts their content, everybody that hosts their content. Um and I'll show you one later uh what to include in it. You can send a self help cease and desist er demand letter. Dear So and so this is Apple Studios Photography and I want you to send me $3000. Um Please do, please comply with my idle threat Uh within 20 days or I'll do something worse to you. Whatever a lawyer demand letter. Oh, I love these. I live for these. Let me write the letter. Let me tell her exactly what's gonna happen when it's gonna happen and attach a copy of the lawsuit to the letter. Nothing like raising the blood pressure by getting correspondence with the return address of the lawyer on it. And then if they don't comply, if it's registered file the copyright infringement lawsuit. All right. Look if you don't bother to register your work and somebody steals it, remember my analogy of the unloaded gun or the burglar alarm that you never turn on. It may be bad business ethics, but you're not gonna get money damages and there is no violation of the U. S. Copyright law if they copyright it and it's not registered, you have common law rights and yes you do have this copyright to control the copies, but you don't have any of the benefits of bringing a copyright infringement suit until it's registered. So um you know, I I keep coming back to the idea of if this is important to you. If copyright is relevant if controlling your property is important to you. I really think that that you need to think about coming up with a system to register it. A lot of people say, well, when I bring it to their attention and they realize that it's mine and they shouldn't have taken it, they take it down right away, they take it down right away. Yeah. Well isn't that kind of like somebody saying, you know, I just stuck you with a poker and I'm burning you with a hot poker. But when you I realized you didn't want me to do it, I I pulled the hot poker off of you. Well, you're still left with a big burn on you because somebody's holding this hot poker to you. The same thing is true with taking your picture down. They still committed the act of stealing it if they steal your jewelry from your house, but they bring it back later. Is that okay? Are we going to stand up for our rights? I mean, I just think we, as an industry need to at least have a conversation about the relevance of copyright and what we're gonna do to protect that thing that we work very, very hard to create.

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