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Re: Cease and desist letters?
Chris,
I'm afraid that legal action threats are your only recourse. In a suit
filed last week in Federal District Court in San Francisco, an adult web
site with images for downloading sued Amazon.com for copyright infringement.
Amazon, as I've written previously, is taking everything on web sites and
selling them for $6.95 a download. I've been a victim, as have many others.
The lawsuit filed asked for $150,000 for each copyright infringement,
meaning for every image Amazon took. The figure is what is allowed under
U.S. copyright law.
You have that same right, whether you sell the images or not, if you
copyright them. To set yourself up for legal action, I suggest registering
your copyrights with the U.S. Patent and Copyright Office. It costs $30 to
register all your images and articles at once; that covers all created or
put up on the web in a 90-day period. The law reads that articles and
photos are copyrighted upon creation, but registering them proves beyond a
shadow of a doubt that you are the creator.
A huge commercial real estate firm that deals in skyscrapers and shopping
malls took one of my articles and used it on their website. And, they had
retained my byline to add legitimacy, I guess. Of course, I found it. I
sent them a cease and desist letter with a CC to my attorney. The article
was off the site within 24 hours and I received a check of payment for the
time they used the article. If they had not taken down my article, I was
prepared to turn it over to my attorney.
Another route you can go if you are a member of GWA is to contact John
Hazard and ask him to intervene. A letter or email from an attorney always
adds a layer of pressure.
We have to guard our intellectual property, because most of us make our
livings creating it.
Doreen Howard
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