No-one is ultimately protected from website content theft. Every kid with knowledge in HTML and PHP would succeed in stealing your web-site’s articles. Of course, if you have put the (c) sign, there is copyright over the content. But the difficulties come when you undertake legal actions to protect this copyrighted content. Here in Bulgaria, the litigation proceedings are not so clear. I mean that the court will take into consideration each document evidencing who is the author of the content. While this is fairly easy with web software applications, the theft of website content is not so easy to prove. Software applications are not so dynamic and one can register a patent over them. The latter registration will give the author a certificate which, subsequently can be used in court as an evidence for copyright.
On the other hand, websites are large pieces of text code and text content.It is difficult to register a patent over the site’s structure and code, as they are so dynamic that they will differ the next week after obtaining the patent certificate.
A good practice is to take advantage of a service called “digital certification of date and time”. In Bulgaria each company which is duly licensed by Communications Regulation Commission (“the Provider”) to issue digital signatures (digital private and public key) offers the so called “digital certification of date and time”.
So if you want to secure your work and copyright over a website content, you can use this method. It is simple and gives you opportunity to prove your copyright over a whole website.
All you need to do consists of four simple steps:
- You must acquire a “digital signature” from the Provider
- Archive your whole website (eg. zip, rar, tar.gz or something else)
- Apply your digital signature to the archive file
- Use the TimeStamp service of the Provider (certification of time and date) over the digitally signed archive
If you follow the steps above you will have evidence to present before court. It will prove the following:
- As of the date of TimeStamp-ing the content, you have had the possession over that archive, and its contents.
- You have the copyright over the content because it has the (c) sign and your name (or company name) included as well as your digital signature applied.
Having this evidence on your side, your chances to win a copyright lawsuit in Bulgaria increase. Of course it depends on the lawyer you choose too. The more technical knowledge he has, the more your chances to win the case grow.
27 November 2007 2:35 pm
Interesting article. But what will happen in the following situation:
1) An entity (legal or physical) steals content from a web site.
2) Changes the (c) sign and authorship information pretending it’s their own.
3) Performs the steps above to sign and certify the content with an authorized Provider.
4) The content looks like it own to the entity, not the original author.
I’m not a lawier but I don’t see a chance for the original author to prove that content was stolen from him and not vice versa. Does in this case apply the rule “the stronger wins (the more wealthy)”.
How does this article apply with respect to Creative Commons and other content licences ?
27 November 2007 8:14 pm
Alexander,
1) in the case you describe, the defense of copyright depends on whether the author has already applied the four steps. If this is the case and the malicious entity also applies the steps, the TimeStamp of author’s file will have an older date than the date of the thief’s archive.
This implicitly proves that as of the date of TimeStamping, the author states that he is the original author. Even more, this is certified by an authority – the Provider (by means of Digital signature and digital document Act).
I do not state that one is not able to bring a copiright lawsiut to court, claiming that he/she is the author of the content. I only say that you have a better chance to win such a case. Every evidence you have on your side increases the copyright defense.
Moreover, you can secure your copyright with withess testimony. The more people see your site’s content, the more witnesses you will have, confirming that as of the date of TimeStamping you are the original author.
2) Regarding the “wealth” issue, what do you mean by this? Expensive lawyers? I don’t think the fee of the attorney matters in this case. What matters is the ability of the lawyer to convince the court in his thesis.
3) Regarding Creative Commons, it is interesting issue which I’ll try to describe in separate post this week.
30 November 2007 4:58 pm
I see that I’ve been misunderstood. I agree that using the steps above will assure one has much more chance to proove their authorship in court.
What I meant with the “wealth” issue was that an author may not have the resources(see the justification for that) to obtain a digital certificate from an authorized provider and pay for TImeStamping service. On the contrary if the malicious entity is interested in the content they may decide spending the money and obtain a digital certificate and TimeSpamping service.
Applied the above steps with the digital certificate of the malicious entity and lacking any digital ceertification by the original author will look like the original author stole the content (because he can’t prove he didn’t).
Using witnesses to proove your authorship is possible but in practice a lot of the content is created by a single person without any witnesses.
30 November 2007 5:18 pm
Ok, now I see what you mean by “wealth”. Yes, the lack of funds for obtaining digital certificate and TimeStamping could be a problem. But if you think that your work is precious enough, you could spend some money and get the certificate.
About the witnesses, I think it is not necessary that they have to be eye-witnesses of the actual submition of the content to the Internet. I think it’s enough that they saw the content on your website at a certain date and that content was licensed under CC.
And in case of collision between witness testimony and TimeStamped content, I think the court will take into consideration the date of each evidence.
2 May 2008 10:30 am
In today’s age and time it is getting harder and harder to protect ourselves against digital theft. Not sure whether this registration will really help you as scammers can easily fake IP adresses to mislead the governing bodies
11 November 2008 1:58 am
Hi There, I’ve read through this and find it very informative. However, Now I’m planning on starting my own web site, and was wondering about the TradeMark and Copyright procedures, How am I supposed to get my site and its content Copyright protected and also how do I get a TradeMark for my site, since its a freelance business I’m thinking of starting.
11 November 2008 7:49 am
Eddie,
There is no complicated way of protecting your copyrighted content. Usually the © sign and your name at the bottom of the website is enough. This is the way of copyrighting according to the Universal Copyright Convention
As for the patents, I can tell only for Bulgaria, because that’s where I register patents. In your country you should find the Patent office and ask for the country-specific regulation.