This is somewhat old news, and I meant to (but forgot) to go over it at the time. At any rate, I'm not sure if you heard, but food blogger Monica Gaudio recently had a food recipe posted without her permission in a New England magazine called Cooks Source. If you would like more details, read this article:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/1 ... ringement/
As a result of this small scandal, Cooks Source no longer exists. Yet, I think it brings up a lot of concerns everyone here has. Namely, what is copyrightable and what isn't? How do I protect my work online? Lastly, what can I do when someone infringes on my work?
What Is Copyrightable?
Copyright is something that gives the author ownership over his own work so that he may profit (not necessarily financially) from it. This then gives the author the exclusive right to promulgate that work. While the copyright is valid, the author is entitled to royalty fees whenever someone else uses the work.
There are two caveats though. One is that a copyright does not exist forever. When it first came about in England in the early 1700s, a copyright could only last for 14 years, although you could renew it for another 14 years after that. Today in the United States, your copyright lasts your entire life plus another seventy years. That means if you wrote something when you were 15 and died at age 80, your copyright on that work will last for 135 years before it expires!
Second, an author is not always entitled to royalty fees. Many countries have a fair use policy, which allows you to use copyrighted works without incurring the wrath of the author. Unfortunately, fair use is actually quite complex, but suffice to say that if you’re not profiting from it, you’re cool (one major exception are illegally downloaded MP3 files).
Under US copyright law, in order to copyright something, it must be original and fixed. I’ll cover original in a bit (it’s more complex), but fixed just means it’s something tangible. You can’t copyright an idea.
Now, originality involves a two-step test as explained by the Supreme Court: (1) independent creation, and (2) some minimal degree of creativity. The bar for originality is thus set very low! You just need to create something on your own, and you just need to be a little bit creative with it.
So essentially, anything you create can be copyrighted. That includes recipes and even your chat conversations! Yet, if your post is just something like "LOL", that is not copyrightable. Keep in mind, it has to be original.
How Do I Protect My Work Online?
First, copyright is automatic. It used to be in the United States that you had to register your copyright, which is why you still hear a lot of people saying that you have to file your work. That of course is no longer true. The moment you create it is the same moment you copyrighted it. By the way, this has been true in most European countries and the British Commonwealth for over a 100 years (in the US, only 24).
Second, keep in mind that Monica Gaudio's experience is extremely rare. Simply put, stuff like that does not happen to 99% of people. But, if you're concerned, there are steps you can take.
One step on YWS is to allow only registered members of YWS to view the work. You can do this by checking off that option below the "Save / Preview / Submit" buttons. Another step is to do a search on Google every now and then for the works you've posted that you value. Take a sentence or two from the piece, place it in quotes, then run the search.
Those two steps are really all you can do. Just like it's difficult to stop someone from cheating off your test, it's also difficult to stop someone from cheating off your work. Fortunately, it's extremely rare and something I've never worried about myself.
What Can I Do If Someone Plagiarizes My Work?
I think what Monica Gaudio did is what you should do if someone cheats off your work. She first contacted the editor of the magazine. When that failed, she posted about it on her blog. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, that then spread and became a meme. As a result, Cooks Source went under.
If it's another forum or website, then just contact the administrator. I've received a couple such messages over the years (both regarding the same person) from people claiming that someone here copied their work. When that happens, I do an investigation and most admins will do the same.
If that fails though, you can always join the site in question and thank the plagiarizer for liking your work so much that they sought to pass it off as their own! Provide a link to your work, and from then on, people will know that the plagiarizer copied from you.
Thanks for posting!