Copyright Laws Are Serious and You Have the Right to Defend Your Work! by Lance Winslow

As a hobby writer in retirement and a highly prolific writer of e-books and online articles I can tell you that we have a severe problem on the Internet with copyright violations. I can't tell you how many of my articles have been stolen and placed onto other websites, and I've even seen where my articles were slightly rewritten and filled with anchored key words, and then the individuals who own the website leave my name on it. Not only does this make me look bad, but they have no right to use that content in that way.

Luckily, I claim copyright to what I write, and I have the right to defend myself, and my work. If you are a writer or you have intellectual property, or you have written books, or articles online or articles in electronic magazines you also have the same rights. The unfortunate challenge is that this problem is so pervasive that you can't possibly track down everyone that violates your copyrights, because no one has that much time in a day. Worse, if you hire someone to track down all these folks it could cost you a ton of money.

Nevertheless, if you can track down such individuals you may be surprised to find that you can serve them and have them come to court and they will actually have to pay you a good chunk of money. One newspaper in Las Vegas the Las Vegas Review Journal is going after people who have stolen their content and placed it on their blogs or websites. It is probably their contention that this endeavor will pay for itself, and the word will get out to folks online not to steal their content anymore.

They have every right to do this, although there are a lot of people online complaining about it, however, it's usually the people who have stolen the content, and that now found themselves in court, and don't want to pay. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 21,500 articles was a lot of work - because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off.