Chapter 20
What about Your Copyright?

As set forth in Chap­ter 19, your web­book can be copied by web hack­ers regard­less of its for­mat. There­fore, your best bet to deter infringe­ment may be to copy­right your con­tent. A copy­right can become your essen­tial means of secu­ri­ty. The cost to file a copy­right with the US Copy­right Office of the Library of Con­gress is $35, and you don’t need an attor­ney. It’s a sim­ple process. Get the lat­est instruc­tions at the US Copy­right Office web­site (https://​www​.copy​right​.gov).

Enforcement

You auto­mat­i­cal­ly have a copy­right for any­thing you write. But enforc­ing your copy­right against an infringer, if your copy­right isn’t reg­is­tered, is a more dif­fi­cult legal chal­lenge (i.e., more expen­sive), and you will have to pay the legal fees. But it pays to reg­is­ter.

Reg­is­ter­ing your copy­right gives you sev­er­al advan­tages should you have to go to court to enforce it. If you sue for infringe­ment based on a reg­is­tered copy­right, you may be able to get legal fees paid and a min­i­mum dam­age amount. In addi­tion, you may be able to get an attor­ney to han­dle your case on a con­tin­gent fee.

Before you sue any­one for infringe­ment, you need to send them a cease & desist let­ter demand­ing that they stop infring­ing imme­di­ate­ly. Most like­ly that will moti­vate the infringer to quit dis­trib­ut­ing your web­book. If not, you can go to court and sue for infringement.

You might put a notice on your copy­right page that you will pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion against infringers in your local fed­er­al dis­trict court (e.g., the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for North­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da). You can find the name of your local fed­er­al dis­trict court at:

https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​U​n​i​t​e​d​_​S​t​a​t​e​s​_​d​i​s​t​r​i​c​t​_​c​o​urt

Such lan­guage puts would-be infringers on notice that you are copy­right savvy and are prone to take action against infringers.

You can also report an infringer to the FBI. Thanks to movie and music indus­try lob­by­ing, it’s a fed­er­al felony to know­ing­ly and inten­tion­al­ly infringe.

A Softer Gentler Approach

Rather than take a hard line, you might want to appeal to the fair­ness of users. A state­ment such as the one rec­om­mend­ed by Smash­words (https://​www​.smash​words​.com), an ebook dis­trib­u­tor, may work well for you:

This ebook is licensed for your per­son­al enjoy­ment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or giv­en away to oth­er peo­ple. If you would like to share this book with anoth­er per­son, please pur­chase an addi­tion­al copy for each recip­i­ent. If you’re read­ing this book and did not pur­chase it, or it was not pur­chased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retail­er and pur­chase your own copy. Thank you for respect­ing the hard work of this author.

Detection

How do you find some­body who is infring­ing on your copy­right? Do a Google search using a long phrase or sen­tence from your book in quo­ta­tions and see what you get. If you find that some­one has copied your book and post­ed it on anoth­er web­site, you can write the web­mas­ter a nasty cease & desist let­ter requir­ing that they take down your book imme­di­ate­ly and forever.

When writ­ing such a let­ter via email, send it via RPost (reg­is­tered email):

https://​RPost​.com

An RPost reg­is­tered email mes­sage will have a big impact on an infringer, and it’s proof in court that you sent the notice (read Hack­proof Email, a webbook).

Note that the threat of an infringe­ment suit will like­ly not work well out­side the Unit­ed States. Nonethe­less, you may be able to get the for­eign infringer’s web host ser­vice provider to have its infring­ing cus­tomer cease the infringement.

Automatic Detection

One way to catch infringers is set up a Google alert. Google will send you an email if there’s a match to your search phrase. You can also try a ser­vice that finds copies of your book online:

Plagscan, https://​www​.plagscan​.com

Dust­ball, http://​www​.dust​ball​.com/​c​s​/​p​l​a​g​i​a​r​i​s​m​.​c​h​e​c​ker

Tur­nitin, https://​tur​nitin​.com

Gram­marly, https://​www​.gram​marly​.com

Anoth­er way to pro­tect your book is to water­mark it dig­i­tal­ly. Invis­i­ble dig­i­tal code is added to your web­pages to enable you to track your books wher­ev­er they appear on the Inter­net. Try one of the following:

Digi­marc, https://​www​.digi​marc​.com

BooX­tream, https://​www​.boox​tream​.com

There are web­sites that may post your book as bait to lure vis­i­tors to take action that does not involve your book. In oth­er words, they do not give away or sell your book. Such web­sites are like­ly to be scam oper­a­tions, and it may not be worth your time and effort to wor­ry about them. They may evap­o­rate in the next breeze. In any event, a cease & desist let­ter is like­ly to stop them.

You don’t want to both­er about indi­vid­u­als who infringe by steal­ing one copy of your dig­i­tal book some­how. You might waste a lot of time for lit­tle reward. You may not want to both­er about any infringer that’s not a major web­site, one that gives away your book free; such an over­sight on your part would be with the ratio­nale that free copies are sound mar­ket­ing. Nonethe­less, you will cer­tain­ly want to stop any web­site that sells your book with­out your agreement.

Format

Because your web­book is not an ebook or a bookapp, it is more dif­fi­cult to steal it and sell it. Some­one will have to gath­er all your web­pages, CSS files, audio files, video files, JavaScript files, image files, etc. from your web­book and place them in a ZIP file for dis­tri­b­u­tion. It’s not impos­si­ble to do, but it’s not as easy as copy­ing one file (e.g., one ebook file). The infringer would then have to sell the ZIP file, not a nor­mal way to sell a dig­i­tal book.

Con­se­quent­ly, you prob­a­bly don’t have to wor­ry about some­one steal­ing your web­book. But you do have to wor­ry about some­one steal­ing part of your web­book (e.g., one chap­ter) or set­ting up your entire web­book as a web­site at anoth­er URL (web address).

Using the Copyrighted Property of Others

Read Chap­ter 21. You need to be care­ful that you don’t infringe on the copy­rights of oth­ers. Remem­ber that if you want to use infor­ma­tion belong­ing to anoth­er, you can always link to it rather than incor­po­rate the con­tent in your webbook.

Summary

A reg­is­tered copy­right and the threat of enforce­ment (or a polite plea for fair­ness) may be your best defense against some­one steal­ing your web­book. Your real con­cern, though, should not be indi­vid­u­als but some­one who steals your web­book and repub­lish­es it. Once you iden­ti­fy such a thief, such a per­son (or orga­ni­za­tion) is like­ly to be sen­si­tive to the threat of an infringe­ment law suit. The bot­tom line is to stay alert but don’t wor­ry your­self to death about some­one steal­ing your webbook.