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Protecting Your Web Content (PART I) ...
The more time and money you put into developing
original content for your website, the more
protective you will feel toward it. As a writer,
I’m quite protective of my own content and
equally protective of the web content I create
for clients.
On a regular basis, I do
research to see if any of my own or my client’s
content “pops up” on any other websites. What
should be done if you find some of your original
web content on another site? And, how can you
protect your online text?
There are several schools of
thought on handling the problem of content
theft. This month, we will discuss how to
document, how to check for plagiarism, and how
to protect your web text. Next month, we will
discuss what to do if your text has been
“borrowed” without your permission.
How Can I Document My Web
Content?
-
If your site has been up
for several years, you can get a copy of it
from the Internet Archive, the “Way Back
Machine” (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php),
to prove when it first appeared on the web.
If your site is recent or has changed
dramatically since the end of 2004, this may
not be useful since the Way Back Machine
seems to be incredibly slow at archiving
these days.
-
Pull dated backups of
your website on a regular basis and archive
these for any potential future need. (You
should be doing regular backups of your site
anyway, and they need to be stored offsite,
just as a precaution against server crashes
and such.)
-
You can print off copies
of your site, showing the date the copy was
printed and drop these in your “legal”
folder. This “PC-to-paper” method may be
long and arduous, especially for larger
sites.
Can I Really Protect My
Content?
-
Although there are
several tools and tricks to make it more
difficult to copy your entire site, or even
to “cut and paste” portions, the fact is
that any content visible to the general
public can be copied – whether it’s via
whole site or multiple page downloads, “cut
and paste,” or manually typing from the
website into a word processor.
-
You can lock down your
view source to protect your HTML code, you
can take other steps (many of which may
actually hurt you in the search engines) to
make it more difficult to “lift” the
content, but the fact remains -- If you can
see it, it CAN be copied.
-
Aside from written
content, you may also want to investigate
ways to prevent your images from being used
by other websites, particularly if they link
to your site to pull up the images. Many
times a particularly lazy webmaster will
link directly to your site to “pull” your
images. Lazy people will go to great lengths
and effort to avoid work. This type of
direct linking means you have added drag
(and often hosting expenses) of increased
bandwidth to support the visitors of the
other site.
Note: I had this problem
with my original cauldron artwork on my website
and fixed the problem by creating a text
copyright listing my website across my logo and
changing the “alt tag” to mention my business
name. To get my image now, they now also get my
URL and business name. It dramatically curtailed
the use! And, during the few days and (in one
case weeks) it took for the website owners to
notice, I got free advertising from those sneaky
sites.
Ways to Check for
Plagiarism
-
You can take some of
your website copy – specific sentences that
are uniquely “you” and plug them into the
advanced search options on Google (or your
search engine of choice) and use quotes to
ensure the results only have those searched
words in that particular order.
-
Plug your website URL
into a freebie service like Copyscape (www.CopyScape.com)
and let it do an automatic comparison for
you.
-
Regularly review the
statistical information on your site if you
have access to your server. (This is how
I originally discovered the use of my
images. I had multiple referral hits from
the same few websites, and when I visited
the sites to determine why they had linked
to me, there was my image on their front
page!)
Can I copyright my site?
Yes. Several services offer
to copyright your site for you -- for a fee.
However, according to the U.S. Copyright Office,
you already own the copyright! From the
www.Copyright.gov site:
Copyright protection
subsists from the time the work is created
in fixed form. The copyright in the work of
authorship immediately becomes the property
of the author who created the work. Only the
author or those deriving their rights
through the author can rightfully claim
copyright.
In the case of works
made for hire, the employer and not the
employee is considered to be the author.
Although not required, you
should add a copyright statement to the bottom
of each page of your website. Be sure the
beginning date reflects the oldest information
on the site. Personally, I use the following
statement:
Copyright © 2000-2004 Angela Allen Parker.
The elements, design and content of this
site may not be copied, in whole or in part,
without the written permission of owner.
You are more than welcome to
“lift” that copyright statement language for use
on your own site, if you don’t already have a
copyright notice in place. You have my
permission!
Next month we will consider
two notably different approaches to the content
theft problem, if you identify that you have
one. You can choose to be reactive or proactive.
Until next time, push yourself away from the
computer occasionally, get out, feel the sun on
your face and enjoy the summer!
EDITOR'S NOTE: the author of this article is
not a licensed attorney and the intent of this
article is not to provide you with legal advice. For matters of copyright law you are advised to
seek the counsel of a reputable copyright
and/or intellectual property rights attorney.
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