Today I have an article featured at SearchEngineWatch on online copyright issues online marketers, especially search engine marketers, need to know both their rights and responsibilities on. I wrote this as an introductory piece that clearly explains U.S. copyright law from the perspective of internet and search marketing, and includes some quotes from attorney at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference, on the panel titled “Copyrights and Trademarks: What SEMs (Search Engine Marketers) need to know.”
Now that there’s been enough sound legal precedents with online media distribution, the search engines have really been able to put together some helpful resources for copyright owners to protect their copyrighted content from unauthorized distrbution, even when outside of the U.S. Most important to achieving this has been the DMCA take down notice, which can be filed with any major search engine, which have legal departments to handle DMCA take down notices for both organic and paid search.
Throughout the years I’ve been in the web business, I’ve found all types of characters stealing my website content. Two particular amusing incidents: one company ripped off my entire design glossary, and it was a pastor out of Colorado offering to his customers “Christian-conscious web design.” Another stole one of my logos, and when I caught him, his response was “Well, it looked so good I just assumed you stole it from someone else.”
That’s just so copy-wrong.
