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The Importance of Copyrighting Your Web Content

Posted by Canvas Dreams Staff on 08/11/2006

"Copyrighting your web content" sounds like a contradiction. The Internet was founded to facilitate the free exchange of information across the globe. And yet, with so many online users and companies paying attention to your information, there has never been a bigger need to ensure that your data, your intellectual property - your content - is protected through copyright law.

Section 106 of the U.S. Copyright Act provides that the owner of a copyright 'has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize' reproduction of the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies and to perform the copyrighted work publicly.

In this article, we will address the importance of protecting your content, how some online services are ignoring your efforts, and what you can do to stop them.

What Your Information Says About You

Before contacting your business, potential clients are likely to read up on you, either through browsing your Web site, or researching for your name(s) through popular search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

The information they gleam from this research can leave a lasting impression before they have a chance to pick up the phone or email you for the first time. Did you know that many would-be employers and recruiters actively use the Internet to perform high-level investigations about prospective employees? This article advises recruiters on the best way to make use of these tools. Because of this fact, it is absolutely vital that all information about you, found online, is up-to-date and accurately represents your character and business.

How Automated Data Harvesting Works

In recent years, "intelligent" search engines have been developed to facilitate this type of investigative research. These tools go one step further from standard search engines. Instead of merely providing an excerpt of text from one of your web pages as part of search results, these new tools attempt to automatically assemble a "profile" of information, a compilation of data generated by copying snippets of content from multiple pages of your Web site.

This type of selective data harvesting, whether automated or not, is frequently associated with spam software designed to "scrape" email addresses from a series of web pages, which are then used to build up categorized lists of millions of addresses. Where the intelligent tools diverge is that they don't simply scrape email addresses, they also look for phone numbers, mailing addresses, company name, employees, descriptive blocks of text -- entire pages even -- and then reassembling them into a single "profile page" for their site visitors to then use.

One such tool is ZoomInfo, a search engine run by a corporation in Massachusetts that scans the Web, assembling bits of data about people, companies, and combinations of the two. ZoomInfo then provides access to that information, some of it free, some of it charged, for a variety of uses, including recruiting and employment.

To its credit, the Web site does include a link on each automatically-generated profile page enabling a user to log in and correct inaccurate information, or add custom new information, about that individual or business. In theory, it makes sense.

The problem with ZoomInfo, however, is that they don't proactively notify you what they're up to. Their services have no means to identify whether the data they're accumulating on you is accurate or not. Instead, to find out if your information has been listed somewhere on a service like ZoomInfo, you must search for your personal information online, and only then can you find out what others are reading about your name or business. Some bloggers have expressed concern about this.

This creates an entirely separate but equally problematic situation. Performing online searches for personal information presents a security risk, as log files are generated by the search engines containing each of the bits of data you're searching for. Searching for your phone number, fax number, business name, address, and employee names -- all sequentially -- provides a search engine with a lengthy list of related data that you just searched for, and which can be assembled to create a profile about your company (name, address, phone, fax, employees, etc). As a recent article about AOL pointed out, this data, drawn from your searches, is already being compiled into personal profiles about you, and sometimes ends up inadvertently handed out to third parties. In the case of AOL, the data was specifically personal in nature - but included credit card numbers, bank account records, even social security numbers -- all of which could be compiled into individual profiles as part of AOL's snafu. That's some snafu, by the way.

Our Encounter With One Harvester

We recently performed a search on our business, and found that ZoomInfo had pieced together segments from our corporate Web site, some of which was old, some of it new, but in any case, presented in a misleading, inaccurate way, which we expect would drive more customers away from us than it would benefit our business in any way. As all of our site content is copyrighted, and as this clearly violates Section 106 of U.S. Copyright law, in that ZoomInfo does NOT have the authority to create derivative works based on our content without our authorization, we immediately contacted them for an explanation, requested that all personal and business profiles be removed. While they agreed to remove our personal information, this is the response we received regarding the corporate profile:

"As a company policy, ZoomInfo does not remove company information from our search engine unless we receive a written notice on company letterhead with the request. You can send this request to..." and included a mailing address in Massachusetts.

This means we'd have to spend the time and cost of putting together a formal "unsubscribe" letter, via postal mail, in order for them to act on our request. Even though they were collecting data about us, knew who we were, and could clearly see we sent our request from our corporate domain. Some search engine service they are, not even trusting the data they collect about us! In response to our comments they were in breach of copyright, they replied:

"Legal precedent has shown that cached content on search engines is not considered to be copyright infringement. While I am sorry to hear that you have a problem with our business model, our company is doing nothing illegal."

We have no problem with cached search engine content. What concerns us is that they copied *entire* segments of our corporate site, which clearly *is* in our opinion a violation of copyright law, as it goes far beyond the amount of information that most search engines cache. In response to our comments about the paperwork hassle of sending a formal unsubscribe request, they responded:

"I would disagree that requesting a signed letter on company letterhead is costly and time-intensive. Our simple process can be completed in a few minutes for much less than $1.00, which I think you will agree is negligible. If you prefer, you can send a document via email with an e-signature, which will prevent the need to pay postage costs."

To which we replied by immediately e-faxing a formal cease and desist order. 24 hours later, we received this confirmation:

"Please understand that new information about you may appear on other web sites in the future. If you are active in any public arenas, such as board memberships, news interviews, community groups, conferences, seminars, professional organizations, etc., there is a high probability that these organizations will publish new information about you on their Web sites. In turn, ZoomInfo may read this new data and construct an independent profile that is not connected to the one you have asked to be removed. ZoomInfo will exercise best efforts to remove this new information, but due to the automated nature of the process we cannot guarantee complete removal of future new information." 

-- Meaning, the entire process could start, all over again, at some unknown time in the future.

The time spent dealing with this one harvester took about 90 minutes. While it was a one-time issue, you can quickly see what might happen should you have to contact a dozen or more services to remove your content. That is one reason it is important to copyright your work -- to protect against unscrupulous services like ZoomInfo illegally copying your content -- even if they claim they are within the boundaries of the law. As part of the copyright, you should be vigilant to follow up on any occurrence where you feel your information has been unlawfully republished, especially if it is being resold to third parties without your consent!

How To Stop Harvesters And Protect Your Content

Many scraping services provide some level of support, such as how to block their agent from scanning and collecting data from your Web site, because they invariably recognize the illegal and unethical nature of what they're doing. If you are a webmaster, or have access to one, your site can be readily protected against these harvesters by adding a few lines of code to your Web sites's "robots.txt" file, which governs the types of services, agents, and search engines permitted to scan and collect data from your site. There are several good online resources summarizing various harvesters in use, including the agent used by ZoomInfo. Similarly, you can use these sites to research other online harvesters.

Other things you can do are simple. In the very least, place a copyright notice at the bottom of every page of your site, such as "Copyright 2006 Canvas Dreams LLC". What it does is declare that you or your business take ownership of your content, and inform your Web site readers that this information is not theirs to freely use and distribute. Showing the copyright typically implies that you are willing to pursue all legal routes to enforce your copyright, including litigation, which most companies will respect.

For full, legal protection, you should register all your works -- publications, articles, images, or even entire Web sites -- through the U.S. Copyright Office. For more information, refer to Circular 66 on copyrighting online works through the U.S. Copyright Office.

Finally, many online anti-plagiarism tools are in use today. These services are designed to let a researcher paste in a segment of text, and then locate Web sites having that same content. While these tools were designed primarily for the academic and publishing communities -- to reduce online plagiarism -- they can also be used to assist businesses when dealing with copyright violation matters. You can learn more about plagiarism, as well as read up on specific anti-plagiarism tools, by visiting the Wikipedia page on this subject.

The Big Picture

Copyrighting your content, researching information already online about you, contacting companies to de-list your information, and tightening up the robots.txt file on your site... These four steps may take some time, and they may cost you some money, but in the long run, they will serve to protect your business interests, and your online reputation, which can have a direct impact on the way your customers, business partners, vendors -- and employers -- perceive you online. In a rapidly growing information landscape, it is vital that you do whatever is necessary to make sure that information about you accurately portrays the real you.

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