Articles

Tracking Copyright Violation and Infringement

There's been a great deal of talk lately about copyright violation as it pertains to file sharing.  However, anyone from a copyright lawyer to the kid on the street will tell you that the genie can't be stuffed in the bottle and that file sharing is here to stay.  As a copyright holder or copyright lawyer, where does that leave you?

There are clearly a few distinct tracks that can be taken.  Those with money and power, such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), have chosen to take the punitive track, having laws changed to support their assertion that those who use peer to peer networks to share files are in flagrant copyright violation.  Copyright lawyers have had a field day, extracting massive fines from a few “examples” while an estimated majority of the population continues to flagrantly violate copyrights and download.

However, many artists who are not at the pinnacle of their careers or have eschewed the studio system have extolled the virtues of file sharing as the best way for people to hear and view new media that would otherwise pass underground with hardly a blip.  This type of ubiquitous copyright violation has made it a whole new class of artist possible.  Copyright violations aside, this makes matters more complicated for copyright lawyers, as some signed artists have been producing whole albums in an on-line “trial” form, in an effort to see how well it works as advertisement to buy the real album.

As any copyright lawyer will tell you, like other forms of intellectual property protection, there are no criminal penalties for copyright violation in the United States.  That doesn't mean the financial settlements in a civil court might not be very large.  If some lawmakers have their way, the penalties will become criminal for those who facilitate large scale file sharing, but this has yet to pass, perhaps given the ubiquitous nature of this type of copyright violation.

As a copyright holder, you may or may not be concerned about file sharing, but you'll definitely want to know how much your content is being downloaded, as will your copyright lawyer.  This can be done by offering the content yourself as official (or not) and then interpolate a rate of conventional Vs. net sales

Copyright violations occur when are ready to find them and often require the assistance of a copyright lawyer to work through all the intricacies.  Otherwise, if you don't go through the bother of looking for your own works on a regular basis, you may notice they could be anywhere.  Look and you shall find.  The question is whether this is market data to you or evidence of copyright violations.  It's up to you.