Lessons

Lesson Info

Copyright and Infringement

little blue circle is rolling around, but this is super simple. I mean, we're spending more time waiting for the website to respond. We have in putting the information into it, and the upload will run just as fast. So I mean again, I'm trying to take away the excuses of folks that have put off registration thinking that this is somehow a cumbersome process. All right, let's go down here. Okay, here we go. Here's how I pay. Okay? Come to my sweet face. Mark James, you have a question? Yes, I do. You just read my mind. So brute camp and a couple of other people are just a tiny bit confused and want some clarification on you Cannot register after the infringement. Drink him. Oh, so you can. Well, you can if it's published. Okay. But not if it's unpublished. Great. There's a 90 day grace period to register if it's published, even if it's been in French. And I've got a story about that, we're gonna talk about if work is published. Purpose Catalyst assets in the chat room. If work is put pos...

ted on Lee onto personal Facebook pages, is that considered a published work uh, who gets to see it? Every. Can the public generally see it? Yes, it's published 90 days. Just have ah, rotating 90 day schedule, and Dominique Heart asks if it's a personal logo. Can you use this process to do a personal love? That's a trademark question. Great, Not copyright. Great. Just wanted to clicking copyright logos. Well, actually, we can, but it won't give you trademark protection. I mean, you can copyright logo because you created it is a graphic designer, but you won't get the right to, um, you won't get the trademark protection of it. Well, I think the confusion, but nobody could make an exact duplicate copy of that work or any derivative works from it. So yes. So if you wanted to inexpensive way, let's say you have, ah, market trademark and you like you just want to be a little bit safe with it when you can afford $35. Could you follow that road? Well, what is it? Is it a picture that we're confident it's a small illustration? Yeah, we could do that. Great. That's cool. All right. Home stretch of entering my email address for the and I just submit the payment. I authorize the charge. Gotta click the authorized button. Click submit payment. Now it's gonna take me back, because remember, I have not uploaded yet. Okay? It's gonna kick me back after they take my money. Governments got their hand out. I put my $35 in their hand, and then it's gonna kick me back to the website where I'm gonna complete my upload. So I've got all my pictures on my my my super rice little thumb drive here, and payment was successful. So now look, look where Matt I'm back in e c o copyright dot gov I'm happy to be here. Right? What's my next button? Continue. So let's rock it over here. Click the continue button. What's it say? Upload deposit. Now, look, they're going to take J pigs gifts. Uh, PSD s, um, tiffs a bunch of old file formats that nobody even uses anymore. The government will take those. I don't think they'll take pings or some other boat things like that. But J pegs are great. And now I'm gonna do click on the upload deposit. But now you can mail a disk in at this point if this upload doesn't work for you. You can print a shipping insert and you can mail a disc in. But your copyright registration won't exist until they actually get the work entered into the system. Mind work is gonna be registered to day. If I mailed it to D C, today would be two days mail time. Plus, however long it takes their people to enter it, how you think that worked in the shutdown? I don't know what the copyright office did or didn't do, but all I have to do here is click on browse. Uh, navigate over here too. Creativelive Alcorn. Contact sheet three. Remember, I put them all in one file. This is like your zip file. Think of this is your zip file with your eight million images in it. Um, I'm gonna click on that. And drum roll, please submit files. Toe copyright office. You are required to complete Galley. I gotta have a brief title about Alcorn Con Attacked Sheet three drum roll, please. Warning. Please Make sure you have selected the correct files. I did. Now, if you send a picture of your mother at Thanksgiving and that's not what you intended to send, That's what You obviously would have a problem in your registration and it would be invalid, and you'd have to re register it. They won't know they do not Look at your pictures. They don't care if your pictures are good. They don't care if your pictures of bad they don't care. If your pictures are unoriginal. They don't care if your pictures are infringing works of someone else. There is no examiner that looks at these to determine anything about their quality. They would register. I mean, if you could figure I You said, um, anything on a disk that was in J Peg format. They scan it to make sure there's no viruses on it, and it's registered, and then it goes into the system. So it looks like in two minutes and 47 seconds, if all goes well, we're gonna be in good shape. Now check this out, take me back to my power point, and then we'll come back to this when I get confirmation. You guys that love to come to creative live right, you love to come to creative life, and you'll generate videos as to why you should be picked to be in the audience to come to creative life. And if you do a copyright search for Creative Live, you'll find that one of the Vicky toe for ta ufdr. She created a video to come to creativelive. She registered it with copyright office. How bout that, huh? So she was serious about protecting her work. It was a visual work. And I found this. It's It's, uh no. I'm sorry. Vicky was the instructor. The this this woman down here whose name escapes me. She was going to Vicki's class. And so down here, I found this link where she'd actually registered her work with the copyright office. Now, my, uh my good friends back in the A V department taken converted my power point presentation to a pdf so I'd ask them if there's, ah, the ability to click on that link in the pdf to see if we can get there. So if we could click right here on this creative live link, it may take us if I've done my work correctly to the copyright catalogue. If you sit in on paper, it costs $65. It cost more money. It takes a long time. If you send it in on paper, it will take a year to get your copyright registration back, which means you will have no protection for that long. It maybe longer than that. Now, up to a year. So the E CEO is the way to go. You got to do the E CEO to get any kind of reasonably prompt protection. So this is my belated slide. Were actually registering one. It says in 30 seconds. Who else is registered? One. Just you guys register one slackers Who at home is registering one with me? Who's got theirs? Done? Who's beat me? I want to know who's beat me, who's got their postpaid and got their confirmation back. I need some. I need some feedback. I have a quick question as far as I cause you see, however many images you can register in 60 minutes that you register, you know, 800 images and two minutes and 47 seconds. What about the other 57? You can open a new session if you run out of time. You got it. If you run out of time, you're dead. You got to start over. You have to have that upload complete and 60. And then if you want to register mawr images, you can continue to open new sessions from your copyright window and keep uploading mawr. You can have unlimited 60 minutes sessions. They don't tell you any of this on the copyright side. So hearing this from me, that's what That's the only place you're going to hear that you have a 60 minute limit. And I learned that the hard way. All right. File submitted. The following files were successfully uploaded. Alcorn, uh, you're finished. Close this window and click Upload complete. Close this window. Well, I did that and then click upload complete. So I'm back to my original window upload complete company and an A. OK, so at that point, you could have had more. Uh, which is you? Click upload deposit again, and you'd send him or stuff, but it's not gonna charge another $35 right? No. OK, no. Now check this out. And that is a that is worth the price of admission, folks. Because what I just told you is very difficult to figure that out. If you before you click, upload complete. If you go back in and do upload deposit. You get another 60 minute opportunity to upload more pictures so you can upload these things one at a time if you want to. I mean it. It doesn't matter, but it just takes more time, so check it out. Now, I've got a case number, so I can I run a quick, quick question. So is it $35 then? Sort of per session upload session so you can continue uploading for that. Same $35 until you click on the upload Complete? Yes. Thank you. As long as they're all part of the same group of unpublished works. Right? Because you called them something so it could be called first quarter 2013 2nd quarter, 2013. You just export all your pictures from those dates on light room, right? Not rocket science, so everybody should do it. All right, I am done. And, um, within about a month, I will probably maybe less. I'll get that certificate in the mail. Let's go back to the power point and I'll show you is actually gonna come back in the mail. This is an actual certificate of registration of mine for some published works that I had. I think I called it back over and wedding. They give you a registration number, and you have to have this before you file suit. Why do I have it? Well, I gave my client her personal license to give her pictures Teoh to use them for personal purposes. I found that this venue that charged me 500 bucks charge me I'd have a license, charge me to shoot at their property. Um, had obtained these pictures illegally from my client, who mistakenly didn't give. Didn't know that she should have given him the permission, took these pictures and put them all over their website After charging me to go make the pictures there. Okay. I didn't call me. Didn't ask me no photo credit, and I don't want a photo credit. I just want paid. Um, put him all over the web site. So now I had unpublished pictures. They put him up all over their website. What can we dio? I've been infringed. Help me. I've been in French. Well, the first thing I did because these pictures were previously unpublished, they didn't exist in ah album. They didn't exist in a book. They were my unpublished fixtures pictures. I'd put them on a CD, which is not publication, and I gave them to one person. Not everybody in the world. I registered him, got my certificate back. The next thing we can dio um yeah, and it Anna is make copies of the infringing work. So do screen captures of the website like Crazy. Make sure you write the date on it. Make sure it's an infringement research the infringer. This is the part about making sure that they have money and make sure that you file suit within three years. You have three years from the last act of infringement to file suit. All right, now, before we sue, there's other fun things that you can do to infringers to protect your work. Um, the first choice that you have is you can take the approach of that. I'm not really into lawsuits. I just don't want to do anything. You know, it's great that my works out there. I really like the fact that it's on this other person's website. I'm going to tell everybody that that's my work. I've never been on anybody is website before and I'm just excited to be out there. No, you can request a photo credit. Hey, I noticed my pictures on your website. That's great. Can you just put, you know, Apple Studios photography on there and give me a photo credit? No. You can prepare a digital Millennium Copyright Act take down notice. The DMC A is a fantastic law that gives us all kinds of fun opportunities to take the infringe ears infringers website down. You send this letter to Google, you guys know how to goto who is dot com and figure out who hosts the domain for folks websites and they list addresses on there and you actually have to do a little bit of research to find the right address for the domain host. You send them a letter, you send Google a letter. There's nothing like taking everybody's S CEO rankings and just eliminating them by taking their whole website down. It's a powerful tool. Once you've been stolen from, um, you prepare this DMC a takedown letter and you send it to everybody that hosts their content. Everybody that hosts their content. Um and I'll show you one later. What to include in it. You can send a self help. Cease and desist. Er demand letter, dear. So and so this is Apple Studios photography. And I want you to send me $3000. Please do please comply with my idle threat, uh, within 20 days, or I'll do something worse to you. Whatever. A lawyer demand letter. Oh, I love these. I live for these. Let me write the letter. Let me tell her exactly what's gonna happen when it's gonna happen in attach a copy of the lawsuit to the letter. Nothing like raising the blood pressure by getting correspondence with the return address of the lawyer on it. And then if they don't comply, if it's registered, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. Now the DMC a takedown notice. This is an actual one. Um, where I report the violation, you have to actually follow the the law and make some certifications in their eso. What I'd encourage you to do is if you do buy the disk and you register for updates, you actually get this DMC a demand letter with the updated version of the wedding contracts. But you have to follow um 15 section 15 of the copyright code you have. Teoh. Tell him that it's registered. Here's where it iss where here's where you find the pictures. Here's who I am. I have a good faith, the belief that its not authorized etcetera and they have to immediately take that down or they're liable for the infringement. So if Google doesn't remove it because these pictures were popping up on Google search, if Google doesn't remove it now, Google's the infringer. Now, in my smiling you think Google's got my 150,000 and there were four pictures? Let's add that together. Is that 600 grand? Because now it's willful. They know that my stuffs on their site now say what you want about not being lawsuit, excitable and thinking. That's a great thing. But will you please take the 600,000? If I were trying to get you to take it from Google? They can afford it. They're infringing on my work. I've told them to take it down, and if they don't take it down, they've got some liability. Now the DNC A does limit the liability a little bit, but it doesn't give him complete immunity. Here's a self help demand letter to the actual person. We can tell them about 250, and attorneys fees, and if they continue to leave it up, that is a continuing active infringement. So if they leave it up after getting your demand letter, it becomes that willful infringement which we get, um, 150 grand for Yeah, Helen does. Is it immediately that they have to take it down after they get it? Or how long you have to wait before it kicks in, like a day? Two days? Oh, it's once they're on notice, they're on notice so soon as they get it. Yeah, even greater legal proceeding. I mean, it be up to a jury is to our judges private What a reasonable time to take it down would be. How long does it take to remove content from a website? How long does it take for me? Too long on to go, daddy and take my website down to move the the U R L to something else or to get a minute? Yeah. I don't think it should take longer than the end of the day after getting it. But again, the demand letter from the lawyer is the best outcome. Because if you've done your homework, it's gonna lead to a copyright infringement suit. And there's very little reason to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit. You will win if you've done it right. If you have an original work that you register that there was an infringing use off and and it was a willful infringement, you're not gonna lose again. If it was an intentional infringement, you get 150 grand. Um, you or you can get the 30 grand. If it was not, you could also make the option to get the statutory damages or actual damages. So let's say that I have taken a photograph of, ah, um what would command a lot of money? Um, Justin Bieber dead Celebrities were probably the most high value things that I can think of off the top of my head. There's a whole market in, um, but if you have a famous picture of a dead celebrity, the actual damages for the infringement maybe mawr than the the 150,000 and statutory damages. So let's say that you've got a picture of Elvis and you've been licensing that picture of Elvis for commercial use for print publication for 50 grand a pop. And let's say that you have somebody that went and made 30,000 copies of it. Each separate copy is a separate infringement, so the actual damages would be farm or than the statutory damages you started to get. The point is to where copyright registration can benefit you in the event you're not gonna know when you need this until you need it. Yeah, Bob. So you just uploaded 800 images hot, 301,300 images and you do this multiple times a year. How do you keep track of those images and that registration certificate so that you know that this particular registration certificate goes with those images on with the pdf? I can print a 65 page, um document for my printer and staple it to the registration certificate. I like to do the PDF contact sheet. It works well for me. You can put it on a DVD because, you know, if you zipped it, you can put your zip on a DVD and put it in the file. Everybody can come up with their own system. If you're only doing it four times a year. If you're doing it every 90 days and calling unpublished etcetera and you can list various states of publication if they're published like any Liebowitz, did you see? She put various dates between this day and this day, and then she uploaded them all at the same time? Yeah. What if you have a You you've uploaded your image. It's copyrighted. But you've turned black and white or you've done some small afterwards. Oceania after it. What a great question. That is the best question of the day. What if what have you created from your original copyrighted image? What have you created? What's it called? And it starts with the D derivative work. You've created a derivative work. You've made a change to it in that separate image could additionally be copyrighted. But you have the right to make it black and white. You don't have to re register the black and white one to control it because you've registered the original image so you could make it black and white. You could make it purple or look at me in my good eye. You can take the bouquet and you can keep it in color. And you could make everything else black and white or sepia. Don't do that. You had me scared. They're a little bit selective. Color is an issue around here. Yeah, I apologize. If that's your thing. If that's your genre, go for it. If you're making money at it, more power to you. But you see what I mean. That's a derivative work, so you don't have to go back and re register it. Now, let's look at it this way. You've Let's say you don't copyright it and you give it to the bridal magazine, You license it to them, they put it in their magazine, they copyright their magazine and somebody infringes your picture outside of the magazine. Do you have any protection? Correct. Answer is no. So just because somebody else puts your image in a collective work and copyrights that it doesn't really give you the protection of the statutory damages in the attorney fees. Um, all right, look, if you don't bother to register your work and somebody steals it, remember my analogy of the unloaded gun or the burglar alarm that you never turned on. It may be bad business ethics but you're not going to get money damages and there is no violation of the US copyright law. If they copyright it and it's not registered, you have common law rights. And yes, you do have this copyright to control the copies. But you don't have any of the benefits of bringing a copyright infringement suit until it's registered. So, um, you know, I keep coming back to the idea of if this is important to you if copyright is relevant if controlling your property is important to you, uh, I really think that you need to think about coming up with a system to register it. A lot of people say, Well, when I bring it to their attention on and they realize that it's mine and they shouldn't have taken it, they take it down right away. They take it down right away. Yeah, well, isn't that kind of like somebody saying, you know, I just stuck you with Ah, poker and I'm burning you with a hot poker. But when you realized you didn't want me to do it, I pulled the hot poker off of you. Well, you're still left with a big burn on you. because somebody's holding this hot poker to you. The same thing is true with taking your picture down. They've still committed the act of stealing it if they steal your jewelry from your house, but they bring it back later. Is that OK? Are we going to stand up for our rights? I mean, I just think we, as an industry need to at least have a conversation about the relevance of copyright in what we're gonna do to protect that thing that we work very, very hard to create. I mean, that's what's creativelive is all about his creative creating works that were going to become fixed and working very hard to get good at it, to be able to sell it, to have clients that like us and to create customer of Angeles. And they have a successful 1st 100 days and to, you know, learn posing and lighting and marketing and branding and all of this other stuff. We put a lot of work into this. What we create is important, and what we create is important and not you know what? You know why we shouldn't be worried about competition because not just anybody can do it. We have to work hard to do it to do it well. And because of that, you know what we have. It's it's it is protected by the US constant to shun. So many things that we think we have a right to dio don't even exist in the Constitution. But the copyrighted artistic works It was thought of by our founding fathers as being important to the civilized society that we live in. So I will step down off my soapbox on. I will encourage everybody to come up with a system to register their work because if you haven't registered it, I'll still take a look at that case because if they made it zillion copies of it, it's gonna cost them a fortune to recall all of them and destroy the infringing works. I've got a little bit of a lever to work on your behalf, but generally speaking of, it's a Web based infringement. We're, and it's easy for them to take down. We're not going to get a ton of money