The government and entertainment conglomerates have been battling with technology for several decades now – the debates we now see have their roots in the 1984 case that pitted Sony’s VCR technology against University City Studios. Yet here we are, some 28 years later, still wondering whether there is any way to put an end or substantially dampen the use of technology for copyright infringement.

Some put the blame on businesses themselves for failing to adapt to consumers’ wants. Illegal MP3 file sharing grew so rapidly, some argue, because consumers grew tired of paying $15 or more for an album when they only wanted a song or two. Now, multiple music services like Amazon.com MP3 or Apple’s iTunes offer consumers the chance to buy songs individually at substantially lower prices while providing record companies with a cut of their profits.

Did your company have to transition from traditional methods to digital delivery? How did it adjust?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

Depending on whom you talk to, e-books have both advantages and drawbacks. We already mentioned several of their advantages. Some of the drawbacks and concerns of moving to an increasingly digital way of reading include the following:

• Decreased sales for companies in between writers and their readers; there is less of a need for all of the middlemen like distributors, publishers, and marketers if writers can publish things themselves and sell directly to consumers
• Copyright infringement is easier when works are available in a digital format; more authors may be less likely to earn a living from writing if many people do not have to pay for their favorite works
• It is easier for copyrighted works to find themselves swept into compendiums, raising copyright infringement concerns (think of Google Books, which has faced multiple lawsuits over the past eight years as it seeks to scan and make available for free millions and millions of books)

Are you involved in the book industry? How have you adapted to the growing e-book trend?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

Keep Up on Domain Registration

Particularly if you have a popular site, someone – often spammers or adult sites – may be watching your URL address closely. It has happened before to companies when they forget to renew their domain name and then someone else jumps in and does so, using a similar-looking website to redirect links to their own products.

Register Your Copyright Eligible Items

On almost all websites, it is extremely easy to take text or images; often all that is required is a right click and “copy” or “save as.” In this way, competitors can bypass all the hard work that you put into building your online presence by simply replicating exactly what you did. Artists like photographers and graphic artists need to be particularly vigilant about this. They often post entire portfolios of their work online. And while this can be effective way to disseminate your works, without proper precautions, you may have just put your works out for the world to get for free.

We recommend registering any images, text or other items on your website that you want to protect with the US Copyright Office. Only with registration can you recover attorneys’ fees and statutory damages for copyright infringers. If you do not register for copyright protection, you can still recover economic damages like lost profits due to the infringing activity, but you may face a more difficult case to prove that something is yours.

How do you protect your online presence from copyright infringers?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

Megaupload is different from torrent file-sharing services in that Megaupload is more like a drop box for files. Internet users upload their files and then receive a hyperlink that they can share with others. Many internet users and companies used Megaupload’s services legitimately. They could upload files too large for e-mail or large files like software and then receive a unique hyperlink that they could share with others. Like most file-sharing services, though, you can also share anything else, like copyrighted music and movies. And, whereas with bit torrents you download a piece of a file from numerous places, Megaupload’s files are entirely on Megaupload’s servers.

The repercussions from the Justice Department’s actions will probably be a mixture of good and bad. Infamous hacker group Anonymous has already attacked web sites for government agencies that were involved in the Megaupload take down. Other file-sharing sites – FileSonic.com and Uploaded.to – cut file-sharing features in the wake of the Megaupload seizure. Will the Megaupload seizure actually end up helping copyright owners by returning their lost profits to them? Maybe, but probably not much. Internet users have already said that they simply switched file-sharing services.

Are you involved in the technology sector? What copyright infringement issues affect your business or how do you deal with them?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

The protests from technology companies and users seemed to have worked, as both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee canceled forthcoming action regarding the bills. This likely means that the bills – at least in their controversial forms – will not be moving forward. This does not mean, however, that copyright laws will stay put. The same day as the protests, January 18, California representative Darrell Issa introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (it goes by “OPEN”). Several Californian members of Congress who were critical of SOPA and PIPA support OPEN.

OPEN appears to better balance the competing interests of those owning copyrights (the companies behind movies and music) and technology companies and those supporting an open internet. For one, there is no automatic shutdown of websites that SOPA would have permitted. Under OPEN, the US International Trade Commission investigates complaints and determines whether to cut off funding for overseas sites behind infringement activities. The target of all of these pieces of legislation – OPEN, SOPA and PIPA – remains overseas sites that encourage copyright infringement.

Do you work in the technology or video game industry? What concerns does your business have for these developments in anti-piracy laws?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

Copyrights protect the games themselves. When software piracy is discussed, this means copyright infringement, as video games are works of expression that receive copyright protection just as novels and paintings do.

Trademarks cover video game companies’ logos and names. Trademarks also come into play with video games that are becoming more and more realistic, since companies often try to incorporate real-life trademarks that belong to companies outside of the video game world. For example, video game giant Electronic Arts (“EA”) recently filed a lawsuit against an Indiana company for EA’s use of Bell helicopters in its popular Battlefield 3 video game.

And, finally, on the topic of patent rights, video game companies have created innovative hardware and design technologies that patents protect. Technologies subject to patents at one point or another have included security features, design of internal circuit boards, proprietary information needed to run software on a console, and the motion sensor technology that the Nintendo Wii made popular.

Does your company do work in the video game industry? What growth have you seen in recent years?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

There is no doubt that SOPA and PIPA deal with an important issue – copyright infringement – but many technology companies and internet users feel that they go too far. SOPA and PIPA did come from the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, two organizations that often made negative headlines for their aggressive pursuit of alleged file sharers of copyrighted music and movies. With SOPA and PIPA, if a company complains that infringing material is accessible through a particular website, that company can obtain a court order that would make that site inaccessible to American internet users. As such, critics have likened the power of SOPA and PIPA to that of China’s “Great Firewall.”

Last Wednesday’s web protests did seem to have an effect, with many Congressional sponsors of the laws withdrawing their names from SOPA and PIPA. How has your business handled intellectual property infringement? What kind of impact would SOPA and PIPA have on your operations?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

Unfortunately, this is not an effective way of guaranteeing your copyright. For one, a person can fake this pretty easily. For example, you could mail yourself an unsealed envelope and then seal whatever you want inside of it at a later date. In a court of law, this is unlikely to demonstrate to a judge that you owned a copyright and that someone else infringed on it.

There is an easier way to protect your copyrighted work. Copyrights exist the moment you create something – a script, a painting, a musical composition and a drawing are several examples. You own the copyright once you create a qualifying work and put it into tangible form. The issue is proving that it is yours and holding people who copy your work liable.

The US Copyright Office offers copyright registration for under $100 for most original works. Basic online registration, for example, is just $35. Official registration with the US Copyright Office is required in order to bring a copyright infringement lawsuit against another. Another benefit of registration is that the US has agreements with many countries so that your works receive similar protection in other countries as well.

Have you registered a work of art with the copyright office? How would you describe the process for other artists wondering how to protecting their works?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys

Opportunities like this have increased, not just for writers, but a number of other artists like musicians and film makers. The internet and social media technology have made it easier for artists to bypass traditional publication routes, which required agents, publishers, financers and a host of other parties that had been necessary in the past to bring a creative work to the public masses. Even for artists who go the traditional route, their path to discovery is often through the internet and social media. Pop star Justin Bieber, for example, came to a music executive’s attention through his YouTube videos.

While the route to public recognition and success may have changed for artists, the need to protect intellectual property remains the same. Artists without the financial and legal power of large companies and agents need to be wary of how they market their products. Less than scrupulous businesses may take advantage of aspiring artists or even steal their works outright. If there is no copyright registration on a novel, for example, it comes down to one side’s word versus the other’s, which is usually not enough to prevail in a courtroom.

Have you used the internet and social media to promote your artistic endeavor? What steps did you take to protect your intellectual property rights?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation lawyers

On the ISP front, the DMCA protects ISPs from being liable for copyright infringement if its users engage in such an activity. Popular peer-to-peer technologies like Napster and BitTorrent programs permit their users to downloaded copyrighted works like music and movies. In order to use these programs, users have to have an ISP like AT&T or Verizon. As long as the ISP takes certain steps required by the DMCA, the ISP is not liable for the copyright infringing activity that its users perform.

The DMCA also provides exemptions for people who get around certain access-control technology (that is, technology which limits the functionality of an item like security features on video games that prevent their copying). Every three years, the Librarian of Congress updates the list of exemptions. The Librarian grants exemptions for things that substantially hinder people’s ability to use copyrighted works for non-infringement purposes like scholarly criticism or interoperability. This is why, for example, jailbreaking or unlocking your Apple iPhone is not illegal, as we discussed last week.

The DMCA tries to achieve a balance between holding copyright infringers liable and not letting copyrights put a damper on discovery. Has the DMCA made a difference in the technology research that you do?

Klein Trial Lawyers – Los Angeles business litigation attorneys