Since we launched Myows Copyright Protection Solutions, a lot of our users have asked about the best way to protect their blogs’ copyright.

The solution we came up with allows you to enter an RSS feed, and from then on all new additions to the feed will automatically be registered as OWs, straight into your Myows account.

This is not only a perfect solution for bloggers, on WordPress, TypePad or Blogger, but since you can enter any RSS feed which content you own, you can also make use of the new RSS Feed registration function to protect your copyright on the pictures you upload to FlickR, the designs you showcase on Dribbble or Deviantart and many more. The possibilities are endless!

To start using the RSS registration function, just log into your Myows account (or signup for free) and look for the RSS Feeds tab.

The functionality should work with ANY kind of RSS feed, but is still “in Beta”. As always, we welcome your suggestions for improvement and bug-hunting skills.

The Myows’ Contract Generator just went live and managing your copyrights just got even easier.

Here’s the inside scoop. From the beginning, the Myows team’s dream has been to help creative businesses and freelancers like ourselves give their intellectual property the respect it deserves.

How? By providing easy online tools that help protect and manage copyrights easily and professionally. The ability to store and register original works (OWs) was a great start but, in order to fulfill our vision, we knew we had to take things further. A truly great copyright management tool shouldn’t just be there to help out in case of infringement. Myows needed to be relevant to creatives’ day-to-day lives too. So we set out to find new ways to help you work safely and professionally and – most importantly – to avoid copyright disputes occurring in the first place.

After some pretty careful planning in consultation with hundreds of avid Myows users and creatives on four continents, we are proud to launch the next big thing in online copyright management: the Myows Contract Generator.

The resulting new version of Myows is a game changer if we say so ourselves. Not only can Myows now help members find copies of their work online (through built-in text and image searching functionality) – but members can now create valuable documents to govern the transfer of those rights to others.

Introducing the Myows’ Contract Generator: a simple tool that takes the pain out of managing, renting and selling your copyrights to third parties (such as clients). The Myows Contract Generator puts proper copyright contracts into the hands of ordinary creatives like us – helping us conduct our businesses and our craft smartly, legally and professionally.
Here’s how it works:

1. In order to create a Myows contract or license you must first stake your claim to the copyright in question.

To do this you simply upload the work itself up onto the system as an OW (or Original Work). An OW can be anything that you have created as text, an image, movie, a screen grab or whatever other digital format is applicable. If you’re already an active Myows user then you’ll already have OWs loaded on your profile.

2. When you want to assign some or all of the rights in one of the works you have uploaded you click on the contracts tab or select “create a new contract” from the OW in question.

You may want to do this because if, for example, you are selling a photograph to a client or handing over a logo that the client that commissioned it. You can then select between and customise a number of very useful sample contracts that we’ve prepared especially for you. If you prefer, you can also use a Creative Commons license or copy and paste your own contract texts to create personalized contract templates that you can use again and again.

3. Once you’ve filled in all the necessary details (such as the duration and area covered by the license for example), you can send the completed contract directly from your Myows profile.

Best of all, the receiving party (your client for example), can view the contract and the work to which it pertains, digitally sign it and/or request changes directly from the link provided. Not only is this impressive, professional and secure but, just like the rest of the Myows system, all of the actions* around your contract will be recorded and time stamped. Creating a history and a trail of evidence that you can use to help protect your rights (and your client’s) in the future.

*This includes the client’s viewing and signing of the contract.

4. The new notifications drop-down at the top left of your profile screen will keep you informed of any developments with the contracts you have issued

(for example if they have been signed and returned or if comments have been made or changes requested).

5. Finally you can also receive contracts from other parties that have provided input into your work or who have assigned some of their rights to you.

For example, if you’re a logo designer and you’ve entered into an agreement to use a particular font-designer’s typeface in your logo, you can formalize that agreement by asking them to send a license to you on Myows.

The result is that way you have all the legal documents you need around the development and sale of your work, neatly and safely, in one place.

Anybody can try out the Myows Contract Generator by clicking on the contracts tab inside their Myows profile. (If you’re not a Myows member you can sign up for free today). Even Free users can create and issue unlimited contracts and licenses.

Our focus at Myows has always been on balancing ease-of-use, effectiveness and value and we believe that the Contract Generator does exactly this. It makes the creation of comprehensive and customized legal contracts quick and easy.

Best of all, generating a license off the Myows system will cost members a fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer, which in many cases is not necessary (when drafting simple contracts)
Please feel free to share your comments and experiences of the Myows contract generator on the forums or add your comments below…

NB: A thank you from All of us at Myows goes to the Beta Testers who have offered their help with usability and debugging.

“Running a Web Design Agency that specialises in designing websites for Artists, Writers and Photographers I have found Myows an invaluable tool that gives my clients the peace of mind so they know their work is legally protected and they have proof of ownership. This is the kind of tool that the design industry has been calling out for”
Robin Jennings | Explainafide

If you too have something nice to say about Myows, if it helps you and your clients avoid copyright headaches, feel free to send me your message so I can publish it, or post your testimonial directly on our Facebook Wall.

We love creatives, getting to know our users, see your designs and find out how you use Myows to protect your copyright. Last week while going through our stats I noticed more hits than usual from Vietnam and decided to investigate. The sudden spike was attributed to AiO Studio, they create great-looking logos and proudly mention on their website that their logos’ copyrights are managed with Myows. I decided to contact the owner for an interview.

1 – Tell us a bit about yourself, where you live and what your business does

My name is Trung Le. I live in North Carolina, US and my business AiO Studio, is located in Vietnam.
AiO Studio is an online company that provides new styles and creative designs to Vietnam. Most of our services are new and never been introduced in Vietnam.

2 – Who is your typical client

Our target is small and home businesses, especially young generation from about age 16-27.

3 – Have you ever had your work copied, if so, please tell us what happened?

About a year ago, we designed a business card for our client who didn’t have a logo. We did a very good job on their card, that included some work on the brand name to make sure it looks nice along with the design. They loved it. Everything went very well until two months later, we found down that our client had just used a part of our design as their brand logo and signage. A regular business card design might cost around $100, but a logo design could cost 5 times more than that. We didn’t want to offend our client and we didn’t actually have any policy said that they couldn’t use our design as a logo.
We felt exploited, even violated.

After that incident, we changed our policy and added a whole paragraph about this. We even stated in our “terms of agreement” that our works are protected by Myows & a Creative License, and until now, we have never had any similar case again.

4 – How did you find out about Myows? When was your first OW uploaded?

After that incident happened, I was wondering if there were something out there that could help us protect our designs. So my friend told me about Myows and said that Myows could help us protected our works, even with logos that not yet being trademarked.

5 – How many OWs do you currently have registered?

Right now, I have more than 40 OWs that have registered.

6 – Did you yet need to use Myows’ case resolution function?

Fortunately, No and I hope I would not have to use it in the future.

7 – What do you like most about Myows?

Easy upload and managing of “my Ows” ;).

8 – What areas could we improve on?

So far, TinEye is not working very well. I tried on some pictures that I’m sure it was being used by other parties but TinEye didn’t find any.
I think it would be a plus if you guys provide some kind of copyright search engine that actually works, it would be very cool even with a price plan.

9 – If we were to create a new feature just for you, what would it be?

The one I just mentioned above, a copyright search engine. It would be a best thing on the planet.

10 – Thank you so much for your time and for introducing us to your company. We wish you much success and few copyright infringement cases. We’ve heard your desire for a copyright search engine and hope to make it a reality in the not-so-far future.

You’re very welcome, Myows is a great service and gives us and our clients peace of mind. I’ll be keeping an eye open for your future releases.

NB: If you use Myows and would like to be interviewed, we’d love to hear from you. Please let us know through our Facebook or Twitter pages

Today I wrote a guest post about the basics of copyright for Wixel’s blog readers. Wixel is the company behind the awesome Boxrockit, a platform that allows you to sell your digital goods in the most simple way.

The article is called Copyright Protection for Those Who Didn’t Attend Law School and is geared towards busy digital creatives and startup owners. In it I cover some copyright basics in what I hope to be layman’s terms:

• Why Copyright exists
• What licenses are
• Who owns copyright on a remix
• Some common reactions to copyright theft amongst creatives
• Some recent cases of copyright infringement we also exposed in our blog
• What you should do when you find copies of your work online
• And finally, why you should care

Go check it out here and please tell me what you think in wixel’s comment section.

This is a bizarre case taking copyright law and take-down notices to an extreme. According to this article, lawyers representing doctors have found in copyright law a way to discourage bad reviews.

By assigning copyright to your doctor on all reviews about his services, the medical professional’s lawyers could then send a takedown notice if you post a poor review on a site like Yelp.

Thankfully, “the former general counsel of review site Epinions, said he’s contacted roughly a dozen websites that publish patient reviews, and all of them said that if a doctor sent a “take-down” notice based on copyright issues, they would not honor it.”

Yet, legally, the review sites could lose their safe-harbor status and suffer the same fate as PirateBay or MegaUploads. (The safe-harbor exempts hosting providers and sites that use user-submitted content from lawsuits as long as they remove copyrighted material when asked to do so by the copyright owners).

So next time you visit a healthcare professional, make sure to read the fine print.

Back in 2009, while we were working on building Myows Online Copyright App, I remember reading about Sky News using a Twitpic picture by Joe Neale without permission or licensing and the debate that followed.

In Today’s case, the perpetrator is again SkyNews, this time using a 1 minute Youtube video without seeking permission and then using legalese bullying techniques to reach an ersatz settlement.

When Terence Eden discovered that a video about O2′s Security flaws he uploaded on Youtube (with usage restrictions) had been used on SkyNews, the news channel of the year shamelessly first offered to pay a laughable 75$ compensation.

Terence rightfully refused and instead asked for a reasonable 1500$ fee.

To add insult to injury, the answer he then received is proper white-collar Goliath intimidation:

As I indicated, we do not yet agree on a sensible figure for this use.

Bearing in mind you are now invoking the Copyright Designs and Patents Act I have placed this matter in the hands of our lawyers.

This does not represent an unwillingness to come to an agreement between us but, unfortunately, it is likely to slow the progress slightly.

So now we have a giant news channel that steals content from the public, then only offers to pay $75 when caught, or else the matter “must go to their legal department that will slow down the process”. I cannot believe that SkyNews is unable to provide a proper licensing fee for it’s content without resorting to such techniques.

No, it’s not OK to just steal someone’s work, and if they catch you to offer a tiny fraction of what the cost would be to produce it in a proper way.

It’s like someone taking a train without buying a ticket - if that person gets caught, has money and attitude, should they be allowed to get away with paying 1/4 of the regular price? What would that say to the other passengers who’ve duly paid for their ride?

So how did this gripping copyright saga end? To be honest, quite disappointingly.

Head over to the original article Sky News Infringed My Copyright on Terence Eden’s blog to find out.

After Thought
Perhaps this is a clever ploy to force content creators worldwide to watch SkyNews, just in case they discover one of their pics or videos being used without permission? Skynews, we’re keeping an eye on you, and you can’t fool all the people all time!

Unbelievable case today, and shocking response from the copyright perpetrators, Curebit, a startup that recently received 1.2M$ in funding and couldn’t be bothered to pay the few thousand dollars it would cost to design and code their own landing page. Poor form Curebit.

Angered by the blatant design and code copyright infringement, David Heinemeier Hansson, the director of 37signals and creator of the the popular Ruby on Rails framework called the Curebit team “fucking scumbags” for serving content straight off the Highrise (one of 37signals’ products) servers.

For the full story, including code comparison evidence, the heated Twitter exchange between the two startups and Curebit’s douchebag response when caught, head over to Venturebeat’s indepth article covering Curebit’s low morals when it comes to copyright.

With close to 50 000 Twitter followers, Jacob Cass is a celebrity in the design world. He runs the popular logo award site Logo of The Day and publishes regular great articles on his website, JustCreativeDesign.

Many freelance designers worldwide aspire to be him; some taking it too literally as this Tweet may attest.

So today we have a case of a brand identity specialist who’s own identity is being used by an unscrupulous thief in hope of getting work from Freelancer.com – imagine the disappointment on the client’s face should he fall for it?

Thankfully, as a design professional, JustCreative seems to be proactive about it.

This obviously reaches further than just copyright infringement, as Jacob’s moral rights are also being infringed, as well as a legally enforceable case of identity theft. (You can read the excellent post by our resident lawyer Steve Ferguson Copyright and Your Moral Rights – What to do if someone claims your work in their portfolio).

I’ve stated before that with great talent comes great responsibility (to defend your intellectual property), and top designers have to deal with copyright infringement on an all-too-often basis. Just ask @Vonster how he feels about it!

Copyright infringement does not only strike you once. Make it clear you won’t let perps get away with it

As a follower of @justcreative on Twitter, I took a screenshot back in August of another case of someone using Jacob’s work in their portfolio (assumably in order to get agency employment)

While stealing is never OK, don’t you reckon it’s particularly pathetic when people steal from within their own community (read the post about MWEB stealing Numericable’s campaign I published recently).

Remember Myows is there to help you protect your copyright.

We’ve humorously covered various copyright infringement scenarios in our KopyKat Files – here are two examples to lighten up the mood:

Before Myows, dealing with Copyright Infringement was a pain, and to quote a recent article from HitJerker Songwriting:

“My favorite site for this kind of copyright protection is Myows. You can register your work electronically by uploading text, audio, etc. Then you can get unauthorized copies of your work removed from sites, send cease and desist letters, takedown notices and build cases against infringers.”

From Registering Copyright on the Internet

Have you ever had your work, or worse, your identity stolen? What are you doing to prevent this happening to you?

I’m going to expose the biggest cases of copyright infringement I find online on a more regular basis. Why? Because it angers me that some people think it’s OK to steal other members’ of their own community’s work, only to claim it as their own.

So today, let’s have a look at how MWEB (South-Africa) blatantly stole Numericable’s (France) ad.

First, take a look at MWEB’s latest ad:

Then close your eyes for second. Remember what you’ve just seen.

Now check out Numericable’s ad:

What do you think?

(thanks to @phr0ggi for the info. Follow him on Twitter, he’s a legend)