The #1 Money Sucking Problem Creators Face

Before we get to part 2 of the Online Marketing series, I'd like to address a problem anyone who creates products or content of any sort for online buyers.

Intellectual Property Theft or IP theft for short.

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It doesn't matter if you are a coloring book author, putting your designs in a published book, a musician hitting YouTube with your latest tracks, a book author, a blogger, a photographer, videographer - if you create content that ends up online YOU WILL BE RIPPED OFF.

There is, and always has been, a mindset about things found online. It goes like this "If it's online it must free". I've even seen written comments from the IP thieves who use the logic "If they didn't want me to take it they wouldn't have put it where I could".

But I have copyright protection as soon as I put my work online - right? Yes, you do, at least under U.S. and most international law. But here's the rub. It's you against millions of users and you have to find your work being stolen and used without your permission before you can issue a Take Down request to the site owner or site host. This is time consuming. A popular content creator is often faced with the choice of chasing down IP thieves or creating new work. There is not enough time in a day to do both.

The more popular you become, the more likely you will be ripped off. I suppose it's a back handed compliment of sorts, the better your work, the wider it will spread throughout the world of IP thieves. Just how wide is that spread? A few years ago I did a few children's books as both interactive apps and traditional books. At the time most of us included an activities section in our apps. This section had a rudimentary coloring program and kids could color in the characters we placed in that section and download their work. A nice updated touch to the drawings that get stuck on refrigerator doors and taped to walls. Recently I found some of those characters on every image download site I hit, on social media groups, all over Pinterest, on vendors in every online retail craft outlet I checked, in coloring books by other authors, and even plastered around AliBaba!

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What did I do?
Nothing.
Because the infraction of copyright law was so wide spread, it would have taken me days of effort to go through every site where I found this stolen work, locate that site's digital rights complaint area, filed the complaint and then waited to see if the product or file was taken down.

To be clear, there are two types of IP thieves - the individual who just wants to grab what you've done for their own use. Coloring pages, images, music tracks, and photos are often downloaded in social media groups or on Pinterest (the biggest single source of IP theft on the net) by individuals who want to use that work to color for free, listen for free, or place in a blog post for free.

These individuals often are unaware that what they are doing is illegal. If they are aware of Creative Commons licensing, they can also misuse work created under the CC licenses. They often don't pay any attention to those licensing terms and use downloaded work commercially, making and selling dozens of tees, tote bags or other products with work that doesn't carry a commercial license.

The second type of IP thief is the professional. There are entire companies dedicated to stealing creative work found online. As an example, there was one "author" who was really the front for a company who scoured the Amazon lists, buying one copy of hundreds of coloring books and then scanning the pages and repackaging them into a "new" book. Using this process, they were able to put out a hundred coloring books in the time it would take a legitimate artist to create one. They could also put a very low price on their books, thus depressing the market for all coloring books. Those books were found on Amazon, Etsy, eBay - every major retail online sales outlet. If we were able to get one title removed, 10 more took its place within a day or two.

Soundtracks and pieces of video easily make their way into new videos thanks to software that can grab sound and screen capture video.

What can a creator do to stop or at least slow IP theft?

If it isn't possible to track down and file take down requests, what can a content creator do to protect their work? There are several things we can do to close the door on at least some thieves. First, let's bust one recurring myth about copyright. Remember, there are two groups who abuse copyright. The professional who does it large scale, and the individual who may be doing it out of total ignorance of the law.

Are you protected the minute your work hits the internet? Yes, but ...
To collect any money from a copyright violation, you must register that copyright with the US Copyright office

I am not a copyright attorney, so I am not an expert on the laws of any country outside the US. I do know that there is a "copyright treaty" that exists between several countries which means that if the infraction occurs in their country, but the copyright holder lives in another country covered by the treaty, you can still sue, and win in court. However, NO attorney will handle the case unless you have registered that copyright.

If your work is a drawing, put a copyright mark © with the year of the copyright and your name or company name on that drawing. Put it on the bottom or in the margin so it doesn't interfere with the drawing itself. Even if it is unobtrusive, even if the user cuts it off, it will help protect you when you send a take down notice or go into court.

If you're using that drawing as part of an advert or walkthrough video, angle it a bit and put something over it such as a group of pencils that will make it harder for someone to photoshop that obstruction out of the drawing.

Many image programs, including Adobe Creative software includes a metadata area. Filling in this information is highly recommended as that metadata travels the net firmly attached to your image.

Likewise, many video and audio editing programs, including Adobe have similar metadata files that can be created and travels along with the audio and video files. This is what enables YouTube, for example, to tell you that your choice of soundtracks isn't allowed because it violates copyright.

One last thing to help you protect yourself from IP theft - clearly state your licensing terms. Remember, you are NOT granting the end user a copyright - only you can hold that copyright. What you are granting them is a license for use. Don't garbage up that license with "legalese" - nobody will read it. CLEARLY state what they can and can not do with your work. Are they allowed to make copies for personal use? State that, and put a limit on the number of copies if you wish. Can they sell the colored in drawing they created from your work? Or gift it? Let them know if that's ok, or prohibit that use if it's not.

Remember also, there is strength in numbers. Join groups of creators like yourself and let them know when you've found work being posted and used illegally. If your work is being ripped off - I guarantee you're not the only creator being targeted. In the coloring book artists FaceBook groups there are posts almost every day for a colorist group, a Pinterest board, an Etsy shop, an Amazon listing that is using content without permission. One artist may get their work taken down - many artists filing against the same scofflaw can get accounts closed and sites taken down.

In conclusion - do some research into the laws that govern copyright in your country, and take at least some of the easy steps outlined above to protect you and your work before you post it online. If you do, your bottom line and your bank account will thank you.