However, as we have discussed before, the registration system does not fit neatly with the realities of the Web and even their new electronic system does not bring the service up to modern standards.

Still, some Webmasters may benefit from registering their works with the USCO and should consider doing so. However, registering every work is impractical and most Webmasters will gain nothing at all from a registration, no matter how frequently they do ti.

So when should a Webmaster register their work with the USCO? It’s a difficult question with no easy answers.

The Limitations to Understand

Though the advantages of a USCO registration are great, there are two limitations to such registrations that limit their usefulness to webmasters.

1. Registration has no impact on the most common copyright infringement resolution techniques (DMCA Notices, Cease and Desists, etc.)
2. It only applies to works included in the registration, not ones that came later.

These elements combine to virtually guarantee that any registration you file for your site will be useless.

You will not require a formal registration in well over 99.9% of all of your copyright disputes and, in the rare times where it might be useful, it likely will not apply. Since newer works, for most sites, are the ones more commonly infringed, the odds of the works involved being covered by your registration are slim.

The only way to keep your copyright registration relevant on a site that is active is to constantly re-register your site. However, that comes both at a high cost to one’s time and to one’s bottom line. If you register your site every three months, as some recommend, it would cost $140, even using the cheaper online service.

However, even with that system, since copyright law does not consider merely posting a work to the Web publication, but rather public display, most works posted to the Web are not eligible for the three-month grace period of registration.

Update: See this comment for more information about the issue of public display vs. publication as it pertains to the copyright registration process. Many thanks to Matt Saunders for the clarification.

This, in turn, means that at any given time, would have a three-month gap in your registration, where the newer works would not be eligible for protection until the next cycle begins. During that time, infringement of new works is ongoing.

In short, even if you took every reasonable precaution possible and spent the time and money to keep your registration up to date, you would still leave gaping holes where you would not be eligible for full protection of your work, likely until it is too late.

Exceptions to the Rule

This isn’t to say that there are no cases where a site might benefit from a copyright registration, just that most sites will not. There are at least a few situations where a webmaster can and should seriously consider making use of the USCO’s service.

However, those cases would typically be limited to sites that meet the following criteria:

1. Static Sites: Sites where the content remains largely constant or, at the very least, see a large amount of misuse of older works may benefit from registration as there is a good probability that any infringement will be of a protected work.
2. Ability and Will to Sue: Suing for copyright infringement takes a great deal of time and money. Even if you are able to recoup the costs of the suit, the energy expended may not be worth the results. You need to make sure that you are willing to go through a long, protracted legal fight that could end up going nowhere, especially if the party is in another country or can’t pay any penalties. Most people and many businesses are in no position to do that.
3. Financial Reasons to Sue: Though there are many reasons to sue for copyright infringement, courts put the most weight on the monetary damages as it is what they can most easily assess. It is important to note that damages awarded for infringement are statutory, not punitive, and thus will be related to the value of the work itself.

If you have a dynamic site and/or lack the ability or reason to actively sue infringers, most likely, a copyright registration is a waste of time and money.

The question then becomes a matter of which sites meet the criteria and become good targets for registration? The answer is surprisingly few.

Sites that Should Consider Registering

If you and your site meet the above criteria, then registering your site is probably a wise move. However, if you are looking for examples of the types of sites and content that should be registered, consider the ones below:

1. Art/Literature Sites: Content on art and literature sites tend to have longer shelf lives than those on blogs or news sites. Works on those are much more likely to be infringed after a registration is filed than on other dynamic sites.
2. Business Sites: Though a competitor copying your marketing or promotional material raises other legal issues, including unfair competition, it may be worthwhile to register the site since a great deal of time and money goes into it. Furthermore, the content, typically, does not change much making it likely that a protected work will be infringed.
3. Stand-alone Works: Any work that takes a decent amount of time and/or money to create should, if possible, be registered before it is posted to the Web. Novels, movies, music compilations, etc. should, if possible, be registered regardless of the type of site they are to be posted to.

But while these works, and others that warrant registration, may seem to cover most of the Web, the truth is that very little of the content on the Web is registered and only a small percentage of that content benefits from their more official status.

Your average blogger or Webmaster has little, if any, reason to consider registering their site with the USCO.

Foreign Authors

To take a quick aside, it is worth noting that authors in countries outside of the U.S. stand to gain very little from registering their works.

While there is some debate whether or not a foreign-born author can sue without first registering a work (Note: I am seeking clarification on this issue and will update when I get a reply), the issue is moot since, in most cases, the cost and expense of suing in a United States court would far exceed any potential gains.

Foreign authors, both legally and practically, have the least to gain from copyright registration.

Conclusions

If the question is whether or not one should register their Web page or blog with the United States Copyright Office, the answer will usually be “No”.

Though there are exceptions to the rule, there are very few sites that would significantly benefit from registering their work. The nature of the Web and the limitations of the registration system make it so that, for most webmasters, a USCO registration is a waste of both time and money.

Fortunately, most of the protections we rely upon as webmasters are ours from the moment our work is fixed into a tangible medium of expression and do not require a copyright registration. DMCA notices and desist letters are all available to us with no formalities at all.

Even if a major copyright dispute were to arise, one could likely leverage copyright management information (CMI) to sue for a previously unregistered work. Though that avenue is limited and controversial, it may provide an avenue for when registration was impossible or impractical.

However, the bottom line is U.S. copyright law does not effectively protect bloggers and others who post content to the Web. Our copyright protection is second rate to the rest of the world and, until the law changes, many of us will have our best legal avenues closed off.

The flaw is not with bloggers unwilling to protect their works, but with a system that is out of touch with realities of the Web.

Over the course of the past few months, there has been a lot of attention paid to the issue by residents of the virtual world and several attempts have been made to educate residents and get the attention of Linden Lab, the operator of the service.

Some of the attempts have included a virtual nude protest, an impassioned video from one of the best-known designers, the creation of protest skins, several shops closing and a flurry of blog posts.

However, the excitement has had little, if any, impact on the running of the service. All responses from Linden Lab encouraged users to follow the existing DMCA procedures, without any reference to the demands and requests of the community.

The controversy, which has remained very heated over the past month, does not seem to be dying down and could have a drastic impact, not just on Second Life, but the Web at large.

What is Going On

The controversy in the second life community is with a program known as CopyBot and an improved version of it.

What these programs do is allow users to copy models and designs from others of the Second Life universe. However, typically these creations are sold in virtual shops and are not designed to be copied. In fact, Second Life has a permissions system that, theoretically, is supposed to prevent such unauthorized copying.

However, these bots manage to exploit flaws or loopholes in the permissions system and allow their operators to copy any items, including those marked as not for copying or resell.

Worse still, the bots can strip out all permissions, eliminating any and all restrictions placed on the product by the creator. This makes it available for resell, often at a drastically reduced price, and furthers the propagation of the copying.

Linden Lab, for their part, has made it clear that using such programs are a violation of their terms of service and have, historically at least, banned users for running them. However, the pace of enforcement has been far outstripped by the growth in popularity of these bots and the dissemination of copied goods.

In recent weeks and months, the issue has come to a head as shops have begun to close and the issue of content theft has been high on the agenda for many residents of Second Life.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that this issue is going away any time soon and it could spell disaster for the virtual world.

A Noble Experiment

The content theft issues in Second Life are interesting because, fundamentally, Second Life is an entire universe made up solely of intellectual property. Everything in the universe, from the clothes to the furniture, are protected by copyright and not traditional property rights.

Linden Lab, for its part, has much of its business model centered around the sale of that intellectual property. They make their money off of exchanging real currency into Linden Dollars, the currency of Second Life.

With an entire economy and entire world based solely upon intellectual property, Second Life becomes something of a microcosm for the rest of the world. Any intellectual property issues will be felt more acutely and more quickly in Second Life than in the rest of the Web.

With that in mind, the results of widespread copying and lackluster enforcement has been drastic. Shops have closed, designers have stopped producing new works and fewer people are creating for the service. Some have even hypothesized that the rampant content theft is partly to blame for the decline in membership over recent months.

Second life is possibly in danger of becoming a ghost town, a house built by intellectual property, torn down by rampant copying.

What Can Linden Do

Linden Lab is in an unusual position. They are not merely administrators of servers, but they are practically Gods of a virtual world. They have enforcement opportunities and powers that copyright holders in the real world can only dream about.

However, Linden Lab has been hesitant to actually use those powers. Instead they’ve relied on more traditional laws, namely the DMCA to handle such matters.

This has frustrated the residents of Second Life by throwing up what they see as unnecessary roadblocks to resolution in the face of a growing crisis.

So what could Linden do? Here are my thoughts.

• Fix the Permissions: Linden Lab has said that it is impossible to stop the use of something like CopyBot. But while DRM fails in the real world due to the realities it faces, if the RIAA and MPAA could control the laws of physics, they could probably concoct and effective DRM. However, even if it only stopped the current bots, it would be seen as an improvement. Complete prevention is not the measure of success in these situations.
• Streamline Abuse Reporting: The DMCA process at Linden Lab works, but it is a headache. Much like Google, they require a mailed or faxed notice, which adds both extra hassle and extra time to the process. They could streamline the process overnight by accepting emailed notices and electronic signatures, as per the ESIGN Act, and in the long run could offer even more streamlining by providing an in-game method for reporting infringement.
• Better Detection and Banning: Users of the software need to be certain that they are going to be banned. Even if they can not close the loopholes, they can likely detect the misuse and notify the copyright holders. This would reduce the need for community enforcement of copyright matters and, when combined with more prompt banning, would discourage the misuse.

In short, Linden Lab has chosen not just to avoid wielding the power that they could have, but to throw up unnecessary roadblocks given the current laws. It is clear that enforcement of intellectual property within the system is not a high priority for them, even though it is a cornerstone of their business.

If Linden Lab were a traditional host and graded on my DMCA Seven system, they would receive a “D-” and would be easily one of the worst hosts I have ever studied or worked with.

The simple fact is that, while their infringement enforcement system might work well enough for “outside-in” infringements where real world copyrighted works are infringed in the virtual one, it is far too slow and unwieldily to deal with the explosion of in-world infringement.

Unfortunately, it seems to be designed exactly that way.

Lessons For the Real World

For those of us who primarily create and distribute content on the Internet at large and not in second life, there are still several important lessons we can clean from the events in Second Life.

1. Reliance on DRM Fails: If DRM fails to protect works in a virtual world, it will fail at least as badly in the real one.
2. Community Action is Limited: Though the Second Life community has been very united in this fight, they have not been able to push for drastic change. Since this problem has not likely yet impacted Linden Lab bottom line, the company has little motivation to act.
3. Community Action Can Work: However other actions targeted at the sellers of copied merchandise have had stronger, if temporary results. The efforts, however, are unsustainable and have drawn a mixed reaction.
4. An Underground Market Will Exist: An underground market that trades both in copied works and in the software to create them flourishes in Second Life, the same as in the real world. As long as there is money to be made, it will exist, somewhere. It is just a matter of how large and brazen it is.
5. Companies Will Not Take Action: The approach of Linden Lab in this situation is the same as almost any large ISP. Though they throw up artificial roadblocks, much like Google, they are going to do what they think the law requires them to do and nothing else. Enforcement is expensive and does not pay for itself, even when the entire business model is threatened.

The bottom line is that the problems in Second Life have direct parallels to ones on the Internet at large. While we may not feel the difficulties and frustrations as acutely as creators in Second Life, the problems are largely the same.

Unfortunately, looking at what is going on in Second Life, the news does not bode well for content creators, no matter what world they work in.

Conclusions

Linden Lab is not likely to take any drastic action on this issue until the copying begins to noticeable affect their bottom line. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, it will likely be too late. A sharp slide in quality combined with competition from other virtual worlds could easily lead to a mass exodus of Second Life’s best users.

In fact, some say that has already started.

If you’re a designer in Second Life, it may be time to start thinking about diversifying or even leaving the service. Though all such worlds will have an issue with content theft once they reach a certain size, there are steps that companies can take to mitigate against and reduce the impact that copies have on the virtual economy.

These are steps that Linden ha failed to take or even seriously consider and that practically guarantees, regardless of community efforts, that the issues with copying will only grow.

If there is any broader lesson that can be learned from this situation, it is that cooperation between hosts, service providers and copyright holders is critical in bringing about change.

Though it is impossible to prevent or stop all copyright infringement, with an atmosphere of cooperation, it can be kept to a minimum.

Unfortunately, that does not seem to exist in Second Life, at least not at this time.

Notes: Linden Lab was not contacted for this article. Answers to the questions were located in other interviews with them as well as their official responses. Those items have been linked in this article. Also, I do not play Second Life and I apologize for any misunderstandings about the game itself. Once again, information was gleaned from the Second Life site and other players.

Photo Credits:

“Party Photo” is from Pathfinder Linden and is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
“Panel Photo” is from Pathfinder Linden and is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Photo of Ziggy Quirk is from her YouTube Video.

In honor of that, I wanted to spend a few hours today getting back to basics as well. This is both for the benefit of long-time readers and for new readers as well as anyone on the Web that need this fundamental information.

To help with that, I’m going over ten basic copyright facts that everyone who creates or uses copyrighted goods should know.

So let’s take a moment to review some copyright basics and, perhaps, learn a few new things along the way.

Ten Facts About Copyright

In order to speed up this process and make this information easier to digest, I’ve broken down the facts into ten short explanations with links to more information if desired.

1. Copyright Is Immediate: Copyright in a work is created once it is fixed into a tangible medium of expression. Though added legal avenues can be opened by registering the work with the Copyright Office, there are no formalities needed to obtain copyright in a work, including placing the copyright symbol.
2. Copyright Protects a Set of Rights: Copyright is not just about the exclusive right to copy, it also provides the copyright holder with a sole right to publicly display a work, to publicly perform the work and create derivative works. Doing any of these things without the permission of the rightsholder is likely to be an infringement.
3. Copyright Lasts a Really Long Time: In the United States, copyright in a personal creation lasts the life of the author plus seventy years. In corporate works, the term is a flat 95 years. After that term expires, the work passes into the public domain.
4. Copyright Does Not Protect Many Things: Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. It also, typically, does not protect titles of a work, systems, concepts and anything that has not been fixed into a permanent medium. Finally, all works that are in the public domain are not protected by copyright and can be used freely.
5. Not All Copying is Prevented: Though copyright gives the author of a work the sole right to produce copies, not all copying is prohibited. Fair use allows limited copying of a work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research.”
6. Fair Use is a Defense, Not a Right: Legally speaking, fair use is not a right, it is a defense against a copyright infringement suit (see footnote 20). Fair use rights do not exist and a whether or not a use is fair or not can only be determined conclusively by a judge/jury after the case has gone to the courts.
7. Work For Hire is Limited: Though, in most cases, copyright in the work transfers to the author, in some cases it can transfer to the employer. Those cases are called “works for hire” and are limited to employees of the company (as recognized by Federal guidelines) and contractors in a limited set of fields that sign a work for hire agreement before the work is created. Most contract work is not a work for hire.
8. It is Possible to Remove Many Infringing Works on the Web: If you find that your work is being misused on the Web, you can have it removed by filing a DMCA notice with the host. Alternatively, you can file a notice with the search engines and have the the content removed from their indexes. This can be done without an attorney or registering a work.
9. Benefits of Registration: Though registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office does not earn you any new rights to your work, it is a prerequisite to filing suit for infringement in a Federal court, it enables you to collect attorney fees and statutory damages, serves as a public record of the copyright and services as prima facie evidence of ownership.
10. Poor Man’s Copyright is a Myth: Finally, many claim that you can protect a work by mailing it to yourself and using the postmark as proof of copyright. This does not work and no provision of the law exists to make it possible. So-called “Poor Man’s Copyright” is not a substitute for registration.

Notes

Please note that all of the links above point to references on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site. Thus, it is crucial to know that all of these facts are based solely in U.S. law and may or may not apply to other countries.

As always, I am not a lawyer and nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice. If you need legal counsel, seek out a qualified attorney.

Conclusions

Though this information may seem very basic to anyone who has read this site for a very long time, it is important to note and to keep it close to heart.

These facts, and others like them, are the foundations upon which all of the work on this site is built and, without a robust understanding of the fundamentals, there is no way that one would be able to adequately protect their works or avoid copyright disputes down the road.

To new readers of Plagiarism Today, I hope that this helps you gain the fundamental knowledge that is necessary to understand and work with the other tools and methods taught on this site.

I look forward to building upon these facts to create a much more robust understanding of the confusing and difficult copyright climate on the Web.

Image Credit: Copyright Exposed image from the U.S. Copyright Office and is licensed in the public domain.l