Combating Piracy
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.