Combating Piracy
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The copyrights on info-products sold on the internet are often violated, resulting in a financial loss for the copyright owner. In this article we discuss how to limit the extent to which this can hurt your business.
Most info-products sold of the internet have copyrights stating that the product is for use by the purchaser only and that it may not be modified, shared, sold or distributed in any way. Simply stating such copyrights does however not prevent purchasers from sharing their copy of the info-product with friends and family or from sharing it using file sharing services. Some copyright violators may even use all or part of the copyrighted material in their own publications.
There are however ways to limit the amount of piracy that will take place.
Clearly State The Copyrights Of Your Product
If you will not allow that your product is shared, distributed, sold or modified by those who purchase it from you, clearly state this in the document. State that all rights are reserved and that violators will be pursued to the full extent of the law.
Urge Readers To Report Piracy
You can also state in the product, that if it was not bought directly from your website or from you on an auction website, then the seller violated the copyrights. You can urge the reader to report where he or she purchased the product. This may deter potential copyright violators from selling or distributing your product.
Format Of Your Document
If you choose to sell your info product formatted as HTML or in a Word document, it is fairly easy for your customer to modify your product or copy and paste from it. A copyright violator may for example change the name of the author to be his own and start selling the product. To avoid this, the info product can be formatted as a PDF document. With PDF documents, the rights can be set, so it is not possible to modify the document or even to perform copy and paste from it.
Personalize The Product
In the document you sell to your customers, you may ad a personal greeting with the name, email address and even postal address if this is available to you. This way, if your customer sells the document to someone else, the name of your customer will appear in the copy sold. As the violator’s name, email address etc can be seen by all his or her customers, this may deter him or her from selling or distributing the product.
Flood File Sharing Services With Fake Copies
If your product is named ‘My Product’ you may place a number of documents called ‘My Product’, ‘My Product Full Version’, ‘My Product Unprotected’, ‘My Product complete’ etc on file sharing services. Such copies could contain part of your copyrighted document or something completely different as well as a message to visit your website to buy the real product. By flooding file sharing services with such documents, a real complete copy of your product may drown in the amount of fake copies available.
Summary
Preventing piracy by the means described above can help reduce financial losses for your business. If you find out that the copyrights of your document has been violated you need to take actions against the violator. A simple warning threatening with lawsuits, reporting of the violation to hosting companies or auction websites can be effective and is sometimes all it takes.
The copyrights act of 1976 forms the basis for the United States copyright law.
About the Author
About the author: Andrew Nielsen is the author of "The Online Business Builder". He is an internet entrepreneur and is currently helping small businesses and individuals making money online. Visit http://www.i-want-to-be-rich.com or mailto: an@i-want-to-be-rich.com
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