How can you protect yourself against charges of copyright infringement?

Answer 1

To protect your work using the copyright laws, you must sue violators and prove they infringed your exclusive rights. You may also report online violations by members of a service provider company and demand the service provider remove or disable the infringing work. Under some circumstances you may also report a criminal violation of your copyright and the FBI will investigate.

The U.S. copyright law automatically protects any original work of yours that is a written, video (movie, documentary, etc.), musical or art form from being used without your permission. A copyright is the set of exclusive rights you receive from the federal government to publish, copy, adapt, display or perform your original work, which is good from the time you create it until 70 years after your death. The work must be entirely your own creation, though, in order to qualify.

But, if your work was created as a paid employee, or if you were paid by commission to create the work, the employer owns the copyright, unless you both agreed otherwise before the work was created.

In fact, only certain limited categories of commissioned works fall under this rule and initial (author's) copyright of everything else is owned by the person creating the works, regardless of what any agreement purports. The duration of copyright on works made for hire (as an employee or otherwise) is 95 years from first publication, if any, or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.

In order for your creation to be copyright protected, it must be concrete, as in written form, film, audio, computer memory, etc. Once it's written, filmed, etc., you don't have to publicly sell or distribute the work. It is yours to do with as you please, but if you do plan to sell or distribute the work, it should include a copyright notice, as a warning to others. To operate as an effective notice this must be the word "Copyright", the symbol for copyright, or the abbreviation of the word Copyright ("Copr."), the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. Notice should be placed where easily visible on the work, if not also digitally embedded. Removal or tampering with a copyright notice is also a violation of copyright law.

It's not necessary to register a copyright, but it is advisable to do so, which can be done for a small charge. Registration give the copyright owner access to the US federal courts as well as possible claims for "statutory damages".

You can obtain a copyright registration application by calling the Copyright Forms Hotline at 202-707-9100, or write to Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20559, or use the online forms at copyright.gov

Answer 2

Only use works that are wholly your own, are in the public domain, or for which you have a license from the copyright holder or an exemption in the law.

Beyond that, there is really no way to know for sure that what you're doing will not be considered infringing. The law is intentionally vague in an effort to be flexible, and as a result leaves itself wide open to interpretation. Couple that with the fact that case law is often inconsistent, and you're always going to be left guessing.

As a creator, something you believe is an homage or reference to an existing work might be considered infringing by the rightsholder. The parody lyrics you wrote for one free performance might find their way back to the songwriter somehow. An excerpt you felt sure would be short enough to be fair use might still land you in court. There are endless examples of this type of thing, not even counting the cases that are settled out of court and never gain media attention.

A few disciplines (such as documentary film) have developed codes of best practices to fill in the gaps left by the law, but even following those to the letter is no guarantee. I've been told 10% is okay, 60 seconds is okay, less than a page is okay, but none of these are codified, and all of them have counterexamples--the newspaper told their 200-word quote from a 400-page book, in the context of a review, was infringing, is just one story of hundreds.

Answer 3

As a user of materials, only use works for which you are the copyright holder, for which your use is exempted in the law, or for which you have a license.

As a creator of materials, register your works if formal registration is available in your country, ensure the copyright notification travels with the material (e.g. it is printed on it or embedded in metadata), keep your contact information up to date with any professional societies so potential users can find you, and promptly respond to requests for permission to use, even if you're just saying no.