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With an explosion in the number of blogsand publisher websites onthe internet, there has been a rampant increase in problem of onlinecopyright infringement. It wont be uncommon, if one fine day you

find your blog posts, or articles plagiarized by someone on his/herblog or website. The recent stay ordered by the Delhi High Courtinthe HT Media Group case (blogged by us here), indicates the magni-tude of the problem. The fact that the banned websites in this casehad the audacity to plagiarize news from HT Media websites, and sellit as their own news feed, says a lot regarding online plagiarism hap-pening in the Indian online space.

Such blatant violation of copyright is frustrating for online contentwriters, as they find themselves in an absolutely helpless situation.Dragging copyright infringers into a copyright infringementsuit sounds implausible, considering the scale of infringement, anddamages resulting from such day to day infringement. In the HT Me-dia Group case, the plaintiff (HT Media) has asked for damages intune of 70 Lakhs from the alleged infringers, thereby justifying, to an

extent, the institution of the suit. On the other hand, sending copyright violation notices to an infringer may lead to

affording legal costs of a lawyer. In my experience, it is always better to hire a lawyer, who is competent enough tounderstand the intricacies of copyright laws and infringement. But, such lawyers come at a fee, and hiring just anylawyer does not make much sense. Therefore, for the aforementioned reasons, more and more bloggers have be-

come vary of the content they are posting on their blogs. This is detrimental to the objectives of open publishing,which is actually meant to encourage untamed expression of ideas, thoughts and philosophies, and sharing of

knowledge.

However, did you know that there is usually a very easy solution to give such online infringers a rap on their knuck-

les? Some days back, while I was reading a blog post by one of my favourite bloggers, Gene Quinn, I got to knowabout utility of DMCA takedown notice. Gene is a US patent attorney and the owner of an IP blog, IPWatchdog. Herecently blogged about how he used DMCA takedown notices to bring down a blog (ironically, belonging to an In-dian IP service company) having posts completely ripped off from IPWatchdog.

So what exactly is a DMCA takedown notice? To understand DMCA takedown notice, we will have to understandthe Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA), passed by US senate in late 1990s. The DMCA is a special enactmentthat criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent copyright

measures, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Now, the DMCA provides provi-

sions of limiting liability of the service provider (hosting companies, such as Rackspace, Godaddy etc) for copyrightinfringement by a mechanism known as DMCA takedown notice. More specifically, the DMCA takedown noticemechanism allows copyright owners to send notices to the service providers informing about websites and blogs,allegedly having infringing material, hosted or cached on their servers. On notification, if the service providers actswiftly and remove the alleged infringing content, then they become immune from any copyright infringement suitlater brought by the copyright owner.

Now, it should be understood that most of the blogs and websites, are hosted on servers of US based service pro-viders, which are bound by the DMCA to act against such notices, even if the copyright owner is based outside US.In other words, an Indian complainant, like you and me, can very well send notices to US based service providers toact against a copyright infringement, irrespective of the fact that the blog/website owner is based in US or not. The

Online Copyright Violation Rapthe Knuckles, and Rap Em Hard

BUSINESS NAME

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi%20High%20Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi%20High%20Courthttp://www.iltb.net/2011/01/delhi-hc-stays-websites-distributing-news-content/http://www.iltb.net/2011/01/delhi-hc-stays-websites-distributing-news-content/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright%20infringementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright%20infringementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online%20Copyright%20Infringement%20Liability%20Limitation%20Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online%20Copyright%20Infringement%20Liability%20Limitation%20Acthttp://www.ipwatchdog.com/http://www.ipwatchdog.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital%20Millennium%20Copyright%20Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital%20Millennium%20Copyright%20Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital%20Millennium%20Copyright%20Acthttp://www.ipwatchdog.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online%20Copyright%20Infringement%20Liability%20Limitation%20Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright%20infringementhttp://www.iltb.net/2011/01/delhi-hc-stays-websites-distributing-news-content/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi%20High%20Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

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only thing that matters is that the hosting company is of US origin. All we

have to do is find the name of the service provider from a database, suchas Whois.net, and send a standard notice (see Template below sourcedfrom www.google.com) to the service provider by fax or by mail. Sendingvia email is not usually permitted.

Format of standard Takedown notice (Source: www.google.com) is as pro-vided below. A sample takedown notice received by Google canbe accessed here.

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has

been infringed upon (for example, The copyrighted work at issue is thetext that appears on http://www.abcd.com/1234_page.html) or other in-formation sufficient to specify the copyrighted work being infringed (forexample, The copyrighted work at issue is the Touch Not This Cat by

Dudley Smith, published by Smith Publishing, ISBN #0123456789).

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing the copyrighted work

listed in item #1 above.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact you (email address is preferred).

4. Provide information, if possible, sufficient to permit the service provider to notify the owner/administrator of the al-

legedly infringing webpage or other content (email address is preferred).5. Include the following statement: I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as

allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

6. Include the following statement: I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accu-

rate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is alleg-edly infringed.

7. Sign the paper.

8. Send the written communication or fax it to the address of the service provider.

So next time you see violation of your copyright, please step up and send the DMCA notice, and rap their knuckles andrap em hard!

Phone: +91-11-43614903Fax: +91-11-43614903E-mail: info@inohelp.com

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About Inohelp IP

Inohelp is an emerging Intellectual Property (IP) service company that specializes inserving the IP needs of inventors, technology entrepreneurs and business owners byprotecting inventions, designs, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and other valu-able intellectual property assets. Inohelp also work closely in association with foreignIP attorneys, who help us in securing our clients IP in their respective jurisdictions atan affordable cost.

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