Your Work is Stolen! 3 Ways to Deal with Infringement

In the old days, getting your intellectual property stolen was somewhat rare, and probably required someone to smuggle a tiny camera into your office building.

These days, the Internet puts all sorts of creative types' work in jeopardy -- writers, artists, graphic designers, musicians, and more. But if you find that your original work has been stolen, repurposed, or otherwise republished without your approval, what can you do?

Thankfully, there are steps you can take to resolve these kinds of problems, often without going to court (which might be out of scope to begin with). Freelance Switch, for example, recently discussed three steps you can take to stop an offense after you discover it.

Notify the Web site. Sometimes that's all you have to do -- send the Webmaster a message, indicating that the site is using your copyrighted content without permission. There's no need to be threatening; often, it's just a simple misunderstanding. After all, a lot of people who should know better often have little to no understanding of copyright.

Send a Take Down Notice. No joy? The first stage of escalation is a take-down notice. You can cite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and be sure to include your name and contact information, the name of the copyrighted material that is being infringed upon, the URLs where the infringing work is posted. Request that the content be removed as soon as possible.

Call a Lawyer. Your last resort -- and I do mean last resort -- is to involve a lawyer. This is a very expensive proposition, so make sure it's worth the effort.