People often use the word copyright incorrectly, especially in the context of blogging. A lot of beginners misunderstand the meaning of copyright and how it may affects their blogs. To protect our published articles in Blogger, we have to understand what copyright really is.
Disclaimer, this article is not meant to be a legal advice. I have no formal qualification related to law. So, please do not take my words at face value. Furthermore, I'd like to discuss copyright only in the context of blogging. Leave a comment below if you find incorrect information.
There is a misconception that you need to pay in order to have copyright over your articles. This is absolutely wrong. Copyright is something that you automatically acquire when you create an original writing.
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Again, you do not need to pay any money or to register your works to any agency in order to have copyright. Therefore, when you write and publish an original article in your Blogger website, you are the exclusive owner of that article and you automatically have the copyright over it.
You are free to use or distribute your articles. You can also prohibit other people from using your articles. Essentially, you are free to do whatever you want with your original works because you are the copyright holder.
Without a doubt, protecting your copyright is quite important for bloggers. You do not want other people to steal away your traffic and income.
Google is getting smarter when it comes to detecting duplicates. You do not need to worry as much because duplicate contents are usually punished and ranked lower. However, paying attention to your contents copyright is still the responsible thing to do. You don't want the thief to claim that you are the impostor after all.
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Copyright Protection in Blogger
Just because you own the copyright, it doesn't mean that other people will respect your ownership. There is no denying that you own the articles. However, bad guys will still try to steal and copy your works without your authorization. Some people may also unintentionally infringe or violate your copyright.
Copyright is meaningless if you do not protect and enforce it. The protection of your articles copyright will require you to constantly monitor the internet.
Now, the process of protecting your copyright can be done by yourself for free or via paid services. There are several things that you can do to deter bad people from using your work without permission.
Before we proceed, I'd like to make it clear that paid copyright protection is
not copyright registration. As I have mentioned above, you do not to register
or pay to have a copyright. You automatically have the copyright over your
original articles or other work. Copyright is free but copyright protection
can cost money.
By law, your website contents is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In a nut shell, it is a law that will provide you with legal standing to enforce your copyright.
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Preventive Measures to Deter Copyright Violation
Here is how you can protect your Blogger articles copyright for free:
Make sure that you have a documentation over your writings. You can do this by having a list of your titles, offline drafts, indexing data, doing regular backup, etc.
Put copyright logo and notice on your blog. This way, you can warn your visitors that you are actively protecting your articles. It will not prevent bad guy from stealing but it serves as a deterrent and warning.
Register your blog in DMCA website. The website will provides you with several tools for copyright protection. It offers limited free service and you can upgrade it to premium. Having your website listed is free. It's a good thing to do because it may increase the legitimacy of your copyright claim.
Put DMCA protection badge, for example like this:, on your website. It's free and it can deter potential offenders.
The premium or paid version of the DMCA website can be really expensive and may not be worth it if you are small time blogger like me. The paid version offers feature such as monitoring and take down management.
If your government support it, you may also file your copyright formally. This step will help you greatly in case you ever need to go to the court. However, you may need to pay some fee to file your copyright.
Be careful of any website that claims to provide you with copyright registration. That claim is very misleading. The copyright is already yours, those websites are probably only giving you services to protect your copyright.
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Reporting Copyright Infringement in Blogger
Bad people may still violate your copyright even though you have done all of the method I've mentioned above. In that case, you can report copyright infringement through several methods.
First, you can contact the offenders directly. You can respectfully ask them via email or other methods to take down copyrighted contents. You can also warn the offenders of the legal consequences if they keep violating your copyright.
If the offenders ignore your request, you can report it directly to the
hosting provider or domain owner. This way, the providers may suspend the
offenders' websites.
You can also report copyright infringement to Google directly from the following link: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?rd=1
The legal troubleshooter tool will help you to identify your problem and submit a request to Google so that the offending content will be removed.
You need to specify the offending content url and put detailed information as much as possible. You will also be required to provide full real name and email address. Usually Google will not take immediate action. Your removal request will be reviewed. It may take several weeks until the stolen content is removed.
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The Google form to request copyright removal in Blogger/Blogspot. |
Please note that using Google's legal troubleshooter have a legal consequences behind it. If you file a false report, you may also face a consequences.
The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.You will be required to provide signature and fill in a sworn statements. So yeah, copyright infringement is serious business.
I will provide you with more detailed information regarding this Google legal troubleshooter and removal request in the next articles.
The last step, if the violation of your copyright cause a serious financial damage, you can always hire a lawyer and sue the offender. You have every right to take this problem to the court providing that you can prove your copyright claim. Unless if the violations is serious, legal battle in the court will not be worth it because it will cost a lot.
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Intellectual Property
To understand copyright, you need to understand what an intellectual property is. Your original creation based on your original thoughts or idea is called intellectual property. It has value even though it is intangible.
There are several type of intellectual properties. The most popular are copyright, trademark, and patent.
Your original articles are considered as intellectual property. It belongs to the copyright category. For your website logo, it belongs to trademark category. Patent on the other hand, related to blue print and tools design.
Copyright and and trademark are regulated by different kind of law. In other words, your articles and your website logo are regulated differently.
To acquire copyright, as I've said before, it's free and automatic. So, according to the law, your articles are automatically copyrighted under your name.
Copyright will last a lifetime and plus 70 years after you are dead. It means
that as long as you are alive, you will always own the copyright of your
articles. And if you are dead this year in 2021, you articles will still be
copyrighted for 70 years more. In the year of 2091, your copyright will expire
and the articles will become public domain.
Meanwhile your website logo is regulated by trademark. You need to register and pay some fee in order to trademark your logo. For small website, logo trademarking is not that important.
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Conclusion
What I have explained in this article will only scratch the surface. Copyright and intellectual property in general are very complicated issues. However, if you are a beginner blogger, you do not need to be too stressed over it.
All you need to know is that you automatically own the copyright of your original articles, copyright is free, and copyright protection is important. Furthermore, filing a copyright complain is serious matter and may have legal consequences.
We shall discuss more about copyright in the future!
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