July 12, 2006
No matter how little interest you think your website generates among its viewers, you should make it clear that the original work you display is your own intellectual property that cannot be used without your permission. How surprised I was one day in 2004 to find that my personal website had been commercially exploited!
I lived in Commerce, Georgia, at the time, and along my street there was an old barn or house covered in kudzu. It was an interesting bit of scenery, so I had photographed it and included it on my website. My wife was browsing through our nearest Cracker Barrel store one day, and she looked through the local postcards. There was one that said "Greetings from Commerce, Georgia" and it had a picture of that barn! It was interesting that someone else had noticed that barn when you would think that postcard printers would be more interested in the historic downtown buildings or something.
She bought the postcard and brought it home to show me. The next day we looked at it again and she remarked that the angle and composition looked just like my photo. Then we compared my photo to it and saw that the shadows and tree limbs matched up exactly; it was indeed my photo on the postcard.
The back of the postcard bore the names of Cracker Barrel and Seek Publishing. I wrote letters to both of those organizations and informed them that my photo had been used without my permission. They agreed to pull the postcards, but they refused to reimburse me for the cost of my letters. I made more phone calls to Seek Publishing and its lawyer to press the issue of reimbursing my costs, but they refused. In fact, John Seals from Seek Publishing threatened to "prosecute" me for a statement I had made on my website or file a "harassment suit" against me to make me go away. I guess he would rather make legal threats and pay his lawyer to do likewise than simply write me a check for, say, ten dollars.
Seek Publishing claimed they simply made an error and somehow forgot to secure my permission. Who knows the whole story. Anyway, federal copyright law allows for recovery of actual damages for unregistered material or statutory damages for material that has a registered copyright.
So my lesson on Internet publishing is this:
- Put copyright statements on your website. It is not silly or arrogant to think that someone may misappropriate your work.
- File for copyright registrations on your work when it is important. If I had done so, then Seek Publishing would have known how much they would lose in court and probably would have settled the matter appropriately.
The form of copyright notice is set out by law, and there are various registration procedures that I have never tried out. (At this point it is cheaper to send a couple of certified letters to one violator than to file for copyright protection.) Visit the website for the U.S. Copyright Office for more information.