In an era where anyone with internet access can easily copy your content, republish and earn from your hard work with a single click while you get nothing in return, learning how to protect your work from copyright infringement can be one of the best things you’ll do to your career as a creative, freelancer, writer or content creator,
Although most creative people are not aware, there are clear steps you can take to protect your work, regardless of whether you’re in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and USA or anywhere in the world.
This is also regardless of the platform you’re publishing on. And often times, these pathways are pretty much straightforward. You can simply do them yourself without involving other people.
As someone who has explored both copyright laws and content creation for over five years, in this guide, I’ll work you through the legal protection you have as a creative and the key steps you can take to protect your intellectual property from copyright infringement, including possible steps on how you can implement this so you can earn from your work, sweat and effort.
Is there a Copyright Law?
Yes there are copyright laws and regulatory frameworks, established to protect authors, creatives, content creators etc. and their intellectual property from theft and infringement of any sort from third parties. These laws are aimed to ensure that authors (creators) enjoy the proceeds of their works.
These regulatory frameworks like The Berne Convention, The WIPO Copyright Treaty, TRIPPS among others apply both internationally and locally in most countries (where they have been domesticated), and there are other local copyright laws like the Nigerian Copyright Act, The South African Copyright Act, The Copyright Laws of the United States etc.
Depending on your location, you can leverage copyright laws either locally or internationally to protect your work from copyright infringement by third parties.
Steps to Protect your Content from Copyright Infringement
With the widespread growth in the use of the internet, it is now very easy to infringe on other people’s most people’s work have been infringed on, either knowingly or unknowingly. But regardless of the intentions behind it, you can take the following steps to protect your intellectual property from infringement:
Understand Copyright Laws
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There are copyright laws established to protect copyrighted works in different jurisdictions. You don’t have to cram all the sections of your local copyright law or the international treaties applicable to you, to fully get covered.
Instead, you want to have at least, a working knowledge of what copyright all about, the various laws that are applicable to you and how you can utilize all of this to protect your work.
With that said, under international laws like the Berne convention, original works are protected automatically, as soon as they are published in a fixed or tangible form like when it is written down, recorded, saved online etc.
This same protection is granted in most other copyright jurisdictions, including Nigeria where the Nigerian Copyright Law provides for the automatic protection of original works, including books, films, music, content, artworks etc.
Although you do not necessarily need to register a copyrighted work to enjoy copyright protection for your work, registering your intellectual property with the appropriate authority gives you an even better standing as author of your work. And a more robust evidential proof of ownership, if you were ever to have a day in court, in that regards.
You may think that copyright covers merely a certain category of works but copyright protection also extends to creative works created and posted on digital platforms as well. These includes works like blog posts, online content, including content published on the social media.
Also, outside having both moral and economic rights, copyright law allows you to assign others to use your work either for free or with royalty payment. It also gives authors the options to grant third parties the right to protect their work.
Additionally, all copyrighted works are protected even after the author’s demise. Depending on the nature of the work, authors could earn a 50 or 70 years’ worth of protection for the work, even after their demise.
PS: Please note that things like ideas, facts, concepts, works not expressed in a tangible forms etc. are not protected under the copyright law in Nigeria.
Register your Work
Registration of your creative work is one of the best steps to protect your work from copyright infringement. There are copyright commissions and agencies, established in countries for the registration of intellectual property and you can register with the one that is relevant to you.
While you don’t necessarily need to have your work registered before it can be protected, as an author, you can approach the copyright registration entity in your locality like the Nigerian Copyrights Commission for instance, to have your work registered and filed with that entity.
Under the Berne Convention, when a copyright work is registered in one country, you do not necessarily have to register it again in other countries signatory to the Berne convention as the former registration is recognized across signatory countries. This also can give you a layer of protection from infringement internationally.
Registering your creative work with the copyright commission goes a step further to protect the work. It creates a public record of ownership which can be accessible online especially in cases of copyright ownership litigations.
It also makes enforcement of copyright protection much easier in court as registering your work additionally gives you a legal proof of ownership that can strengthen your right to sue for damages, in cases of copyright infringement.
To register your work for copyright protection in Nigeria, you can access the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) website, fill the form, undergo the screening steps and have your work registered and certificate issued.
Alternatively, you can approach the NCC office and have this sorted out from scratch.
Adding a Copyright Notice
Although a copyright protection notice will not grant you an automatic protection from infringers, adding a notice to your work is one of the steps you can use to protect your work from copyright infringement as the notice does deter potential infringers from infringing on your creative work.
Also, outside deterring a potential infringement, putting a copyright notice in your work can serve strengthen your case where there is an infringement as the notice can be considered as a caveat or warning against infringing on the material.
A copyright notice does not directly protect your work. However, the act of putting it as part of the work does give you some level of advantage.
While copyright notices are mostly noticeable on published works like books, films etc., they can also be used to protect digital works on platforms like websites, blogs etc.
To make the most of a copyright notice, you have to place it at where people can easily see it. For example in books, you will most likely find it at the second page of the book, immediately after the title page.
For movies and music, you can find the copyright notice in most cases, at the ending of the movie, after a chronological list of the casts, actors, performers etc. but for websites, you’ll find most copyright notices towards the footer part of the website.
Copyright notices has a standard format where you must add the symbol (or the word “Copyright” itself), include the name of the copyright owner, the year of publication and also, the copyright statements like “All Rights Reserved” which indicates that you do not intend for anyone to use your work without your permission etc.
Where you’re putting the notice on a website, include the date from the first year you wrote your content like 2010-2025 for example. This covers all content on the website.
Employ Digital Protection tools
As a creator of content that’s widely shared in the digital media, there are a number of digital protection tools you can also use to protect your work from copyright infringement especially across digital platforms and beyond.
For this to work, you can use any of the following protection options:
- Digital Rights Management (DRM): This is a very effective tool for the protection of written creative works like books etc. it uses technology to protect and grant or restrict access to copyrighted materials like books on specific platforms. DRM ensures that only authorize persons can use access or use a copyrighted material.
- Watermarks: these are visible or non-visible identifier like logos, code etc. embedded into digital content to indicate rightful ownership or prevent unauthorized use of a copyrighted work. Watermarks are very effective for digital contents, including Images, videos, written works, broadcasts etc.
- Meta Data: The use of meta data for content published online can give you a further avenue to protect your content from copyright infringement. Using the meta data option, you can embed author data into digital files and this will be clearly visible to search engine crawlers. It is very useful for content like Images, Videos and Blog Posts etc.
- Restrict Copying: Using content management systems like WordPress for instance, you could use certain mechanisms to restrict copying or right clicking on the content for copyright infringement purposes. This is very crucial for blog posts and other written content.
There’s also the option of encrypting the content to protect direct access. Using these options, you can take further steps to keep your work from copyright infringement.
Create Licensing Agreements
You can also create licensing agreements as a means to further protect your work from copyright infringement. This can come in handy especially where you have co-authors, where you’re working is a freelancer, creative commons licenses or usage agreements.
This kind of arrangements is very useful in situations where you want others to be able to re-use or redistribute your work but in a very specific way.
It can also come in handy where you’re trying to create viral content for visibility without entirely restricting the use of your work.
Popular application of this copyright protection option is in creative commons which are copyright agreement that allows creators to retain their copyrights to their creative works while allowing others to re-use the piece of creative work, share or build on their works, under specific arrangements.
The use of creative commons is quite popular for works that involves writing, music and art etc.
If you’re a freelancer, you can also employ the use of freelance contracts to specifically spell out how and to what extend your work can be used by a particular employer.
And finally, you can have a general content usage agreements that indicates how your work can be used, where it can be modified and in what instances attribution will be required or not.
Monitor your Work for Infringement
As part of the popular steps you can take to protect your work from infringement, monitoring the work itself can be one of the most practical options.
You can use a simple mechanism like Keywords research to monitor mentions for your name, brand, unique phrases relevant to your content or sections of your content can give you a clue on whether your work is being infringed upon.
Outside Keywords Searches, the Search Engine can also indicate places where your work is being published, outside your indicated platforms, if you copy and paste sections of the content on your preferred search platforms.
I’ve used this option to spot out copyright infringement on our work in so many instances. You can use it to identify and report such infringement to appropriate authorities, based on your platform.
For platforms like social media, you can also use the search box, hashtags, keywords etc. to look out for possible infringement of your work. And further report the pages or request for a take-down of such content.
If you’re on YouTube, the content ID mechanism provides a great option to safeguard your work from infringers especially where you’re uploading an original work.
Generally, outside any of this and regardless of the platform you’re publishing on, you can create a specific search online to understand where your work is currently posted on, outside your designated platforms.
Enforce your Copyright Protection
Protecting your work from copyrights infringements does not merely start and end with taking the pre-emptive measures I’ve listed here. It also means taking even further actions to enforce your copyrights.
This will includes taking actions like:
- Contacting your infringers to cease and desist from infringing on your work.
- Asking for a take-down of the infringed work on the platform they are being published on.
- Filling a DMCA for a platform take down, if the work is being published on Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or other platforms in America and beyond under the coverage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is very useful for digital works plagiarized or infringed on, whether on social media or websites and blogs.
- Reporting to the local copyright protection agency in your locality like Nigerian Copyright Commission etc. these platforms do have enforcement powers and can investigate copyright complaints.
- Taking legal actions against copyright violators and asking for damages.
There are a number of further actions you can take to protect your work from copyright infringement and taking these steps listed out can get you started.
Final Words
Copyright infringement is a real concern for content creators, writers, creative and so many professionals who have put in their hard work and effort to create content, only to have them stolen by others.
In the past, a lot of content creators have ignored the infringement of their work because they didn’t know better but you’re no longer powerless.
You have worked hard to create your intellectual property and you have the right to enjoy its full benefits while sharing it with whoever you want, if you wish to.
Even though there’s no uniform universal legislation for copyright protection across all countries, there are a decent regulatory framework to protect your right across most jurisdictions.
Understanding your local laws on copyright and taking the steps listed in this guide can take you through the process. And if you need further guidance, you can contact your local lawyers or reach out to us here.
Now, it’s your turn. What are your concerns when it comes to protecting your intellectual property rights? Drop your comments below.
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