We certainly brought you Monet, the Concorde, Debussy and the croissant (sheer genius). While I’m at it, we can also take credit for the metric system (sorry to our US members!) and the not-so-humble cabaret. And then of course, there’s the bicycle and let’s not forget creme brulée.

But you can thank us for these things later. In the meantime, it seems only fitting that we also had a hand in creating Myows, the global platform to help creative folk protect the integrity and value of their Original Work through registering and managing their copyrights. But you knew that.

Even more fitting: as of today, Myows is available in French!

After considerable effort and many cups of (good French-pressed) coffee, Myows is now available to the Francophone world.

Considering that French is spoken by over half a billion people worldwide (from Mauritius to Quebec, from Paris to Laos) we think that’s quite an accomplishment! What’s more, for 136 million people, French is their native language (mother-tongue speakers).

To be sure, not all of these individuals are creative and even fewer have access to a decent computer… but for those who do and who are, simply select French from the drop down menu in the top right hand corner of your Myows homepage and you’ll be good to go.

Voilà et Bienvenue dans un Monde plus sûr pour vos Droits d’auteurs.

NB: It’s been a lot of work and the French site still has a lot of things that are needed, so please view it as an early Beta. For instance, I still need to record the screencasts and some links might redirect you to English pages instead of their French counterparts – we’ll address that. You may report bugs and give your impressions about what we’re busy achieving on the Myows French Forum. Thanks in advance for your understanding and support.

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation” – Herman Melville.

Whether they do it for love or for money, all creatives want their work to be original. Originality is seen as the yardstick of creative skill and talent. But for the purposes of copyright protection, what is the threshold of creativity that makes a work original?

Whether they are contemplating action against an infringer, or their own work is challenged, it is important that creatives understand the concept of originality.

A distinction needs to be drawn between copying, and using existing work to create something new. The former is infringement; the latter is a derivative work.

Originality begins with the choices you make when creating a work. These choices may be limited by the technical standards or best practices of your discipline, or dictated by the use to which your work is to be put (i.e. an iPod needs to play music). But then there are those creative choices you make, those that apply your signature to the work. It is these creative choices that are protected by copyright.

Take a telephone directory – it is made up of information from the public domain and there is very little scope for arranging that information in a creative way. The creative choices that go into it are very limited. Compare this to the creation of a website. A significant amount of creativity goes into selecting the elements and putting them altogether.

Originality standards are not the same in every country. There may also be different standards for different categories of works within a country (e.g. utilitarian or functional works such as computer programs and databases vs creative works).

However, in practice, it is often the case that the end result is the same across jurisdictions even thought different standards have been applied.

It must always be remembered that while creative works will by definition be ‘original’ and covered by copyright, creativity is not required to make a work ‘original.’

Here are a few questions to ask yourself if you ever get into a bun fight over whether your work is original (or you are taking on someone who has copied you):

1. Did you refer to existing work during the creative or development process?

2. How much did that work influence you (be honest with yourself)?

3. What “creative” choices did you make about the work, which were not based on industry techniques, best practices or the functions to be performed by the work?

(The more intellectually creative you are, the more chance you have of the work being original).

4. How much of your own personality come through in the work?

5. Can you identify elements of the work that could only come from you?

(If not, start trying to develop a distinctive stamp you can put on your work)

6. Don’t be guided by the puddle of blood, sweat and tears – copying can also be hard work sometimes.

7. If there was very little scope for you to arranging the different elements of the work because of the nature of your discipline, the choices you made when arranging those elements will be scrutinized more closely.

(So document as far as possible how you went about selecting and/or organizing the elements)

8. Do you need to be factually accurate when creating the work?

(If so, the scope for creativity may diminish)

9. Is the general public going to be interested in the work you have created? Is it different to other similar types of work (e.g. maps, diaries)?

It is not easy to be absolutely novel and unique these days. But the good news is that copyright law doesn’t expect you to be before it protects you.

Wim from sitebase.be is a popular developer on the envato marketplaces.

Thanks to your votes his OWIT WP Plugin – that allows you to protect the copyright of all your WP Media files – won a cool iPad in our 4-Step API Challenge.

Well done Wim, thank you for the picture and you’re very welcome!

This is just a quick note to let you know that the votes are in. Our expert panel of judges (including Max, Dave, Jonathan Bailey (from Plagiarism Today), Adii (from Woothemes) and myself) has finally come to a decision!

Once again thanks to everyone for their sterling input, time and energy. And so (he says opening the blue envelope…), the $1000 cash prize for overall coolest App that best met the criteria set is (drumroll) the very useful and well executed Myows Drupal Module developed by WildPeaks.

We will be in contact with you shortly to get your prize to you. Thanks again to everyone for contributing to the Myows vision and helping us help you!

From what I can tell, Stephen is one of those guys who like to get involved, who see life as a positive challenge. He works tirelessly works to make things better, cooler and fairer. We like Stephen for exactly these reasons. His curiosity and determination to actually do relevant stuff reminds us of our own. After all, that’s why we started Myows. Stephen has helped us with technical issues in the past, participated actively in idea generation and debate and is one of those members who make this project worthwhile.

If you want to check out Stephen’s work – take a look at http://poxmedia.com/ and http://stephenlovell.me/ . Here’s what he had to say for himself during a recent Skype interview…

Chris: Thanks for taking the time out to chat today man.

Stephen: You’re welcome, my pleasure.

Chris: You’ve been a pretty active member of the Myows community which is really cool and encouraging for us, when did you first sign up?

Stephen: Oh wow, it was right there near the beginning, I believe it was the week you guys ran the free account contest. I found out about it a day or two before that and then signed up.

Chris: Brilliant, and you work for yourself?

Stephen: For the most part. I’ve had a regular day job here and there along the way but it doesn’t offer enough variety for me and, as a creative person, I thrive on some variety in my life.

Chris: Well I was going to comment on that actually – because not only do you seem to enjoy straddling the fine line between design and developing… but your graphic styles are also pretty diverse.

Stephen: Yes, it helps keep me sane, “lol” but at the same time I think it gives me a versatile edge to be able to tackle a project from different angles depending on the needs of a project.

Chris: What kind of title would you hope to have applied to you in the course of your career? As in ” there goes Stephen, he’s a friggen’ amazing ……..”

Stephen: That’s a very good question. In a perfect world I think Artist would be most appropriate. It’s fluid and it’s not so much a static label. It breathes creativity, but at the same time can be used in a professional sense. But, for sensibility’s sake Designer would probably work best. It denotes one who follows some loose set of “rules” to convey a message, at least to most people I think.

Chris: Nice definition! That distinction between artist and designer is an interesting one I think – especially in these digital days… Creatives like us seem to have a tough time defining ourselves sometimes

Stephen: Yes, and since we are also self-marketers it’s more of a matter of which title sounds more professional and attainable for the [insert type of client] I’m trying to attract to hear.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Stephen: In the end, I’ll work my ass off, do what I’m passionate about and let whatever label falls on me be. In this world we live in, I’m not sure I could control it anyway.

Chris: True, speaking of self-marketing and professionalism, we’ve been looking at ways that Myows can help provide more services that not only protect and manage copyrights but also help the budding creative signal his professionalism to the outside world (including clients) – that and the fact that she/he takes her/his work seriously. Deterrent measures is one example of this.

Stephen: That sounds like a very bold and extremely useful direction to move in.

Chris:  I believe you were looking at some ideas with Max (one of the Myows founders) a little while back?

Stephen: I was in fact. To a degree I think the Drupal module got some of this right, but what I had suggested earlier was that depending upon the CMS the plugin/module is created for OR even the the service Myows is integrated with (Tumblr, Vimeo, Flickr, etc.), the person could have the ability to upload an image onto the site to put in a post, they are presented with a two way choice. 1.) Create a new OW, 2.) Attach to an existing ow (yes the second option could be abused, but the fact that the original image is on Myows the case would fall apart if the images didn’t match up in the end anyway)

Stephen: which ever route they went the image would then be wrapped in a (abstractly thinking) “box” denoting it is an OW within the site, blog, etc. and upon hover you’d get a little Myows graphic with the ow#. (The Drupal plugin has a similar functionality here), BUT moreover upon clicking the little graphic on hover a drawer, or whatever seemed UI appropriate at the time would appear and show more detailed information about the ow including a link to see the copyright, OR even the ability to click a link and request a license with the owner of the OW so that they could legally use the image.

Stephen: If this was handled generally through WYSIWYG editors within services and cms’s you could wrap text, video, images, etc. and have the Myows plugin/module/etc. detect the content type and give appropriate interfaces tailored to them if need be. So you could copyright a poem & the picture in the poem separately

Stephen: Furthermore, the ability to use a jQuery color picker to change the color of the Myows hover graphic would be a very nice touch to that module/plugin/etc.’s settings so you could match it to your site’s theme/design/and so on.

Stephen: I think that is pretty much the gist of it.

Chris: That would provide really nice seamless integration with the ‘outside world’ … makes good sense. This kind of functionality fits within a broader matrix taking Myows out there and at the same time provides Myows with a great opportunity to gain presence! We’re going to have to come back and pick your mind on this in due course as we begin developing on the platform we’ve built so far.

Stephen: Oh by all means feel free to ;D

Chris: Out of interest, seeing as you seem to be quite an adventurous guy in terms of trying new things out… have you ever tried any of the other copyright-related sites or non-repudiation services out there before we came along?

Stephen: nope, Max showed me two of them and to be honest I don’t think I would try them. One of them seems heavily involved into the education market I believe. They don’t have an inviting atmosphere, if you will. If you’ll pardon the unprofessional approach, Myows just feels inviting and cool, bottom-line. (And not the jock that beats you up cool, but the big brother everyone wants to be friends with)

Chris: Nice, that’s a great description of the brand and very much who we are / what we were going for

Chris: Glad we succeeded on the branding front

Chris: I really like your new site BTW.

Stephen: Oh, thank you. It took longer than it should have and there’s still work that hasn’t been put in there yet. Busy, busy

Chris: Yeah – the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, my little design company also needs to revamp and clean up our site… (and it’s still Flash… very 2007)

Stephen: Oh well, you do what you can with the time that you have.

Chris: Yeah and it’s usually for clients…

Chris: Well, before we call time, is there anything else you want to put out on Myows – any other ideas, likes or dislikes?

Stephen: I mentioned it to Max, but I still think a badge system at some point would be fun and helpful in building a community in Myows.

Chris: Yes Max mentioned that – great idea, we’re putting it on the golden list!

Chris: One more quick question before I sign out and go hunt some dinner: Where does the name “Pox media” come from?

Stephen: Branding specialists would probably kill me. There is a Dr. Stephen Lovell of Russian History I believe, for as long as time has existed he has killed my search results, so I knew I needed a pseudonym. I wanted a word/title that wasn’t currently being used so I could have originality and I liked the letter “X” (lol), the way it sounded. So I wanted to also be fluid in title so I added media and eventually after Google search after Google search, etc. I decided on POX media. Not a grand adventure, but it worked. I’ve been using it ever since.

Chris: Cool, well it stuck in mind!

Chris: Awesome Stephen, well thanks again for your time man. I’m sure that we’ll be drawing on your enthusiasm and creativity again soon…

Stephen: Later!

Chris: Cheers!



We’ve launched our first community open letter at dear-google.com and we’d really like YOU to sign it. When it comes to addressing the big guys, there’s a fine line between ranting and sucking up. We hope we’ve trodden that line well, but we’ll leave that up to you to judge. Basically, we’re looking for new ways to create an online culture that’s  little more mindful of copyrights WITHOUT making it tougher to browse or use content. We figured this kind of dialogue may be a good place to start… Here are some excerpts:

“We are creative people. We are developers, photographers, bloggers, designers. We are artists. We create for a living. We create for love. Piracy and intellectual property theft harms us daily…. We would like to work together to make it harder to steal using Google…. We’d like to do this without impeding the search experience or asking Google to relinquish its impartiality. We are looking for a win-win situation”

The foundations are then laid for a simple but effective three pronged approach:

1. “Penalize pirate sites that sell illegal copies of other people’s material (images, designs, templates, text, music etc.).”

2. “Discourage non-attributing content scrapers that profit from traffic generated through stolen content (images, text, artwork, video, data etc.).”

3. “Where available, we would really like to see copyright information displayed in search results for all web pages and sites (including owner, date and author details).”

Of course, these three points are elaborated in considerably more detail on the petition site, dear-google.com.

“We believe that these three simple suggestions will help foster greater respect for original work and the creators that create them. Please consider working with creatives to implement these or similar measures by 11 November 2011. Not because we’re asking but because it’s right, very not-evil and it’ll contribute greatly to an online environment that fosters respect for content creators and their work.”

Chris: So how long have you been studying for now?
Jenelle: You mean college? Over a year now

Chris: You’re studying at Bulucan State University right?
Jenelle: Computer Engineering

Chris: You refer to yourself as a ‘web creative in the making’, is this your real passion?
Jenelle: Yes, the thing is, universities here in the Philippines don’t offer web design courses

Chris: So where have you been picking up on your web development skills?
Jenelle: Fom the tutorials around the web, I’m mostly self-taught

Chris: Well I guess that makes sense, if your passion is for the web (and coffee according to your Twitter profile)… that you’re learning online. What are your thoughts on originality and the web, I’m guessing you’ve grown up in a very web-based world?
Jenelle: First of all, I think the web paved the way for artists to show off their work to others. It allows us to connect, one artist to another… whichever part of the world we are located. But at the same time, there is also the greater risk of copying or rather claiming the ownership of another’s work.

Chris: What do you think about our rights to own our creative work in a world where so much stuff is free an easy to share? Do you think artists and designers should be concerned about security?
Jenelle: I think everyone should have knowledge about the rights that they have in their creative work. And I think designers and artists are the ones who need to inform and empower themselves in this matter. When one knows about the violations made against one’s work, there may be fewer cases of digital infringement. That copy frauds may think twice before copying others’ work.

Chris: It’s good to know that young and upcoming talent like you are switched onto this stuff and thinking about their work this way! Do you think a lot of other creatives at starting to feel the same way? Do you guys ever discuss copyrights and intellectual property at university?
Jenelle: No, not really. It was only last week that I really became very aware of how important it is to protect my work

Chris: And did this come as a result of stumbling onto Myows or did you go looking…
Jenelle: I first signed up at Myows and then, some days later, when I was showcasing one of my works on a certain website, someone claimed it as his own. Fortunately for me, I uploaded the files on Myows before I showcased it at the site.

Chris: So the service has worked for you so far?
Jenelle: With that I had the guts to tell the guy that I am the original author of the work and that I can show him proof with the help of the certificate you guys provided . It was really a great thing that I signed up at Myows.

Chris: And what was his response?
Jenelle: He was banned from the site. It turned out I wasn’t his only victim.

Chris: That’s really awesome! Congrats for standing up for yourself and protecting others from the same kind of disrespect! I’m really glad Myows could help you out like that.
Jenelle: Thank you.

Chris: You’re welcome, thanks for your enthusiasm on Twitter too
Jenelle: I think I should be thanking you guys. Without your service I wouldn’t have known what to do

Chris: You should (lol). Please keep spreading the word… Every bit helps! Before I go, is there anything you’d like to see us add to or change with the Myows service in the future
Jenelle: I really could not ask for more. Just keep up the great work, maybe

Chris: Cool well maybe we’ll surprise you!
Jenelle: Maybe integrate copyscape or tineye at the account page so we don’t have to visit them in another tab?

Chris: Yeah, we’re looking into that and will keep you posted… It’s a logical addition and hopefully we can develop a platform to integrate using our new API
Jenelle: I’ll be looking forward to it!

Chris: Cool, well thanks for your time. I’ll let you know when I publish this profile (probably next week) and I’ll make sure you’re on the list to receive a free upgrade to a premium account when it launches
Jenelle: Thanks!

Chris: No worries, keep well and good luck with your studies! Cheers.
Jenelle: Thank you very much

My name is Victor (UK) and i’ve just signed up for an account at myows.com. However i’ve as a upcoming house musician/producer i’ve got a question which has been bugging me for a while:
If someone approaches me wanting to remix a song of mine, how do i go about this and what role will my copyright play in this matter? Or in a case whereby I would like to remix someone else’s original work what do i do?? If there are cost implications involved, what would i have to pay for?
Please help
Kindest regards
Victor

And here is Steve’s answer:

Hi Victor

Welcome on board to MYOWS and thanks for your question, it’s a good one.

If you want to let someone else remix your music, you would grant them a licence to do that. The type of licence would depend on whether you want to make some money or simply want to share your work. Check out www.creativecommons.com for some licence ideas.

If you want to use someone else’s work, the first thing you need to do is identify exactly who owns the copyright in the song. Remember that sound recording are made up of a number of elements which are protected under copyright law. Therefore, there may be a number of different copyright owners involved in one piece of work.

To make it simpler for you, there are a number of organisations in different countries that can help you find out who the copyright owner is for a particular song or music. In the UK, you could try the Music Publishers Association (MPA) (www.mpaonline.org.uk)

You usually have to pay a royalty to a collecting society when using someone else’s music, unless you can deal with the musician directly. The amount of the royalty will depend on what you want to do with the work.

As an up and coming musician/producer, you definitely want to make sure that your contribution to the remix is acknowledged. You can also stop any remixing that distorts or mutilates the integrity of your work by exercising your moral rights. Likewise, when you are using someone else’s work you should also credit them in your remix.

We hope this gives you something to work with. If you need any more help, let us know.

We asked Victor for his permission to publish both his question and our answer, as we believe it can help a good amount of people from our Copyright-savvy Creative Community. If you also have questions relating to your rights, don’t hesitate to ask them on our forum.

But those are all my own personal happy feelings and pleasant thoughts, (probably a fair amount of ego in the mix too) shared only by my business partner and the most ardent of our team members. It’s not a public thing – at least it wasn’t until the wonderful folk at ‘ngage’ (ngage.co.za) got hold of us. (In fact their lawyers got hold of us, I like to believe they didn’t have the cojunas to call us themselves… makes you wonder). Anyway their lawyers charged us with copyright infringement and ‘passing off’ (pretending we were them: a mining PR consultancy based in another city) and hinted that we may be liable for criminal charges… we could land up in prison for our trespasses! At the time we had never heard of Ngage (complete with ‘funky’ spelling a la the 90s) and so  we bitterly contested their claim.

Now it’s fairly evident that our two logos look alike. They’re both in the commonly available font (Danube) and they both are based around versions of the English word “Engage” (although only one of them is correctly spelled). It is also apparent that both we and they (or their appointed designer) liked the “a” of the Danube font more than any other letter in the Danube alphabet. We created a meaningful device with ours and they used theirs to make a lovely rain pattern. Unlike the other guys though, I’m not going to cry fowl until I’ve talked everything over and got hold of the facts, I’m just saying that I don’t like what I see here. But here’s the thing that drove me nuts: it cost us about $2000 just to defend our own logo by responding with an equally unnecessary and vicious lawyers’ letter. And if we’d had to see this thing through to trial? We would be looking at upwards of $50,000. The only other alternative would be to close our doors or at least change our name and logo even though they were rightfully ours.

It was this very stressful, upsetting and time-wasting episode that taught me just how useless copyright law is to the man on the street if he’s acting alone. In fact, the way things work in reality can even end up costing little guys like us a fortune – just in a bid to ward off attack and prove that we are in the right.

Myows was started to put an end to all this kind of nonsense. The argument between us ultimately boiled down to who had their identity first. Again, I like to think it was us because as soon as we put a date to it (in our lawyer’s response), they ran away. But how cool would it have been to send them a C&D letter straight off the cuff. “Thanks for bringing your theft to our attention, we have proof that we created the logo on xx/xx/xxxx, so bring it on big boy…”

Myows is here so you don’t have to go through the same kind of ridiculous, expensive and draining ordeal that we did. It is because of this experience that we at Engage Brandcraft (with an E) protect our work religiously and rigorously. Please don’t wait till some ponsey twit steals your work and then tries to sue you before you do the same.

After a little consideration, I’d like to share a clause that we’ve got some great mileage out of at Engage… it reappears quite often in our client contracts. It may be of use to Myows users. It is (drum roll): The General Copyright Agreement. We use it on release forms, SLAs and project contracts amongst other things. It’s the copyright equivalent of Grandma’s allspice. It’s delicious and it goes on everything.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN EXAMPLE – IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE ADVICE! IT IS NOT A TEMPLATE FOR GENERAL USE.

This particular piece of legalese was prepared by Engage Brandcraft’s attorney for Engage Brandcraft’s use. I’m sharing it with you as an example but if you’d like to use it, I can’t sue you (I’d be very hard pressed to find a judge that felt that this constituted an Original Work). Just know this: if anyone tries to harm or upset you in any way as a result – this has nothing to do with me!

I specifically like the fact that this is in relatively plain English (if your client doesn’t understand this… RUN). I also like the fact that it covers three important aspects of copyright that are ignored by less organized souls:
- the right to use the work (dependent on payment),
- the right to alter work (moral right)
- and the right of the creator to include the work in her or his portfolio.

Most of these rights stand even in the absence of a clause like this or similar contract, but by asking your client to acknowledge these points, you align your expectations. You also signal that you take your work seriously! You’re a professional.

Here it is (read it out aloud in your head; it’ll make you feel bigger).

——————————–

All materials or property belonging to or commissioned by the CLIENT, as well as work performed, may be retained as security until all just claims against the CLIENT are satisfied.

If you wish to use the design we have created and/or the images within it for another purpose or project, including a reprint or exhibition, you must contact us to arrange the transfer of rights and any additional fees before proceeding. If printing or other implementation is done through your vendors, you agree to provide us with printed samples of each project.