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.

Okay, to be honest, it’s a little frustrating. But then I guess it’s always annoying to be faced with trust barriers when you’ve started a positive initiative and all you want to do is go out there and nail bad guys. Of course, these questions are only natural at the end of the day. So here is our response.

We realise that there will always be skeptics and conspiracy theorists, but as for the rational majority – here’s what we’ve done to ensure that you can trust us with your work:

1. Each file is stored and backed-up on two remote, independently operated and maintained servers on opposite sides of the world. If both these servers are simultaneously and cataclysmically destroyed, the safety of your OWs will cease to be your priority.

2. A unique hash value is generated for each work at the time of upload. This is permanently linked with the file to form your OW. Basically each file is packing its own fingerprint/retinal ID, proving that it is who it claims and that it was born when it was born.

3. All databases (including hash values) are periodically filed (as recorded data) at our lawyer’s offices in a large steel safe that may even survive the cataclysm mentioned in 1 above.

4. All the leading web security standards (including SSL encryption) have been thoroughly and conscientiously applied across our app to ensure safe transfer of data and reliable verification where required. (Gmail and Basecamp only recently switched to this approach, and Facebook or Twitter have yet to follow our lead in terms of site-wide SSL security.)

5 Dave, Max, Steve and I are all really good-natured people with solid middle-class upbringings, decent (not decadent) tertiary education and friendly dispositions.

What else can we do to help you believe we’re on your side?

Plenty. But right now our focus is on getting a great service and product to people that do believe us in light of the above. Time will provide the best evidence of our intentions.

Suffice to say that we’ve gone the extra mile in building a brand that stands for integrity, safety and solidarity amongst the creative community. Ergo: there’d be little point in allowing anything or anyone to jeopardise all that.

As far as l running off into the night with our members’ work is concerned… what would we do with your OWs if we were to steal them? Would we print them all out and fold them into origami paper hats?… perhaps. Would we secretly sell them on to the highest bidder? Now that would be ridiculous.

Stealing our member’s OWs (or allowing them to be stolen) is really not a sustainable business model. If this ever happened, you can bet your cotton socks (it’s an English thing) that somebody would find out and spread the word fast. We are talking about the net after all.

We would prefer to keep our business and personal reputations in tact thank you very much.

Bear in mind that, if we breached fellow-members’ trust, we’d go down in history, not only as evil idiots, but also as irony personified. Myows would be stuffed. What a waste… even if we were the bad guys.

Which. Of course. We’re not.

The question essentially is this: because USCO is available to US users and certain rights are exclusively granted to parties that register their work with this authority, what is the point of using Myows? Here’s my opinion on the matter.

Myows was started as an effective response to the problem of growing copyright infringement globally – especially due to increased internet penetration and the resulting ease with which work can be stolen, copied and sold online.

In most countries, copyright is automatically assumed by the author when an original work is created. When two parties dispute copyright in a particular work, the arbitrator or judge looks at the evidence provided by both and decides accordingly to whom the copyright belongs.

The US is the only country, to my knowledge, that allows for the registration of copyrightable material but this does not require the registration thereof in order to claim copyright in the US – a common misconception.

Parties who have not registered their work with USCO still have the same essential rights as those who do so but with a two key exceptions:

- If your case lands up in a US court, you will be presumed to be the owner of the work if it was registered with USCO and the burden of proof would then rest with the other party to show that the copyright does, in fact, not lie with you.If the other party can prove that they were the original creator, then your rights – even as an USCO registered creator – will fall away, unless you could prove that the other party ceded their rights to you.

- Should they win their case, users of USCO will be able to claim punitive damages in addition to other damages. However, a non-USCO user would still be able to issue an injunction against unauthorized infringement and claim for loss of income if commercial loss can be established.

Bear in mind that these differences only become relevant if a dispute is escalated to full-blown litigation which is both expensive and time consuming and is not really feasible for many creators (especially those who consistently produce larger quantities of work).

USCO registration will likely have no bearing on cases involving cross-border copyright theft where at least one party is not a citizen of (or registered in) the US.

Myows is primarily a management app.

The protection facility is a very important part of the offering presented to the Myows community but it forms part of a wider management function.

Sure, Myows creates valid and valuable evidence for you, but it also stores and arranges your evidence along with the original files (of all kinds). The service goes way beyond registration.

Myows allows you to organize all of your copyrightable material along with associated licenses, releases and cases past and present.

Myows also gives you access to legal templates, provides you with sound legal information and helps you follow the correct procedural steps when dealing with infringements, assisting in ensuring that you are in compliance with the law.

The scope of the app will eventually extend beyond even this (for example: suggesting dispute resolution options and putting you in touch with legal advice in your area). These functions are clearly outside the ambit of USCO, they are also not at odds with USCO’s services.

Myows is free and instant.

Basic USCO registration takes a while to process and costs $35 minimum. You could also end up paying for other sundry items thereafter (Issuance of a receipt for a sec 407 deposit = $30).

If you write 3 blog articles a day or take 50 new pics a month and you want to register them with the government office, it’s going to cost you serious time and money. Myows saves you both and it is easy and enjoyable to use, whilst still creating genuine and useful evidence.

Essentially, USCO and Myows are not mutually exclusive

To be honest, if I were based in the US I would upload all my work to my Myows account. Then, when I created something very unique and valuable with an imminent and high threat of theft, I would also register that work with USCO.

And what would I do with my proof of USCO registration? I’d save it with the corresponding work on Myows of course.

Find out more about USCO at: http://www.copyright.gov/

* Footnote: Myows has been designed, in part, to represent a global copyright savvy community.

It is an app as well as a movement and we need as much support as possible if we are to achieve our goal of empowering creators and reducing the incidence of online copyright. Strength in numbers is also something to think about here if the idea appeals to you too!

Last year, my creative studio (Engage Brandcraft) was accused of stealing the intellectual property of a bigger, much more aggressive company who had in fact clearly stolen ours.

They threatened us with legal action if we didn’t ‘cease and desist’ with the flagrant use of our own original work (in this particular case, our name and logo – a very nasty allegation indeed). Trademark issues ensued – we were being accused of passing-off and copyright violations.

Goliath eventually gave in but not without a very expensive counter-threat from the lawyers on our side. Taking it to court would probably have cost in the region of approximately 50 000 USD. We came off lightly. Yet we’d done nothing wrong to start with! In time and money alone the exercise cost us well over 2000 USD. And let me assure you, we didn’t have that kind of money lying around. Similar predicaments face creators from all walks of life, daily, across the globe. Other “writers” steal our articles, companies turn our Youtube^® uploads into ads, bullies copy our logos and then accuse us of being the perpetrators.

But surely our original works are protected right? According to the law in most civilized nations, we all have inherent copyright[1] in our creations as long as they’re original and reduced to a physical form. Logos, website designs, paintings, books, songs, videos, poems, your childhood drawings, you name it – they’re all yours if you made them. You have automatic copyright for free and for nothing[2]. Congratulations! We even have the Berne Convention that regulates copyright laws between member countries (From the US to India, Brazil to the UK) so your copyright is global. So yes, that’s the spirit of the law.

The problem comes with implementation. The realization of justice tends to boil down to two things: time and money. Ironically, good creatives often have neither. Ergo: your copyright is essentially moot. You see, most of these cases are civil and many contestations will boil down to who was the author which, in-turn, will come down to the “burden of proof”. You’ll make claims, they’ll make claims, you’ll show them print-outs, they’ll claim you printed them yesterday, they’ll produce witnesses, you’ll try to get hold of a techie who can prove the date on your blog-post is accurate (which they won’t be able to do) and so it goes.

In fact you’ll be lucky if the judge even knows what a blog is. And you’ll do this all by yourself, or with your very expensive lawyer by your side. Not enough money, not enough time… waste of energy you reckon. So you leave it. Not exactly self-respecting. Hardly a just outcome. The obvious conclusion: the situation on the ground is totally unfair, imbalanced and something needs to change.

So – very much as a result of our unnerving experience – I joined forces with local designer, Frenchman and out-the-box thinker, Max Guedy along with technical genius Dave O. (in Singapore) and Scottish IT/IP lawyer Steve Ferguson to create Myows. That’s Myows (as in “my Original Works”)- a global network of smart creative’s who are looking to change the way our copyrights are upheld. At the heart of this growing community lies the Myows app – a site that helps members claim and manage their creations, protect their intellectual property and enforce their rights. It’s pretty, universally accessible, easy to use and secure. It’s available, free at www.myows.com.

Sites like this have the power to change the way we think about our rights and, in turn, reflect the pride we take in our creative works, whatever form they might take. The challenge is to start looking at copyright protection as a matter of simple, everyday discipline – like locking your car when you leave it parked in the street rather than waiting to have it stolen and then trying to track it down and suing the thief.

Logging, maintaining and managing your copyrights is smart. It’s also simple and free. I urge any creative who takes their creative work seriously to sign up. It is our hope that you’ll avoid ever going through the huge amount of BS, hassle, stress and unnecessary expenditure that we were forced to endure a year ago. It’s a waste. Trust me. Sign up any time and join smart creative’s from the world in saying enough is enough.

[1] From South Africa to France, India to the USA (17 U.S.C. §201)

[2] Except in the USA where you have to pay and then wait up to two years

In the world of digitization, file sharing and online publication however, the widespread copying of creative work has become a big issue, and one that can sometimes cost creatives their livelihood. Creatives need to be proactive about their rights in order to protect their work from unscrupulous idea pirates.

Times are changing for a better sharing of legal information

The problem is that, traditionally, legal information and knowledge has been kept under lock and key – reserved for a select profession (namely: lawyers). However with the advent of the internet and the realization by many that legal information is no different to other types of information online, there is a new trend emerging whereby legal information and knowledge is becoming more accessible to the common man (non-lawyers).

This is great news and it comes at a time when they need this information more than ever. To protect their work online, creatives need access to quick, user-friendly legal guidance on what their rights are and how to enforce and protect them. With access to this information, they can empower themselves to take certain preliminary steps themselves, and if that doesn’t work, when and how to engage specialist outside help. Legal information without the complexity and legalese will also result in the spread of more jargon-free, helpful and relevant advice to other creatives. This, cumulatively, will contribute to a culture of respect for copyright and the protection of creativity online.

Knowledge of copyright laws is power

Having the knowledge on what steps can be taken to protect their work online will assist in avoiding long, impractical court battles with infringers. A number of these steps can be taken online from the creative’s own desktop. Take myows.com for instance – a new online app which not only provides creative’s of all types with third party verification of their date-of-creation but also assists in pursuing their legal rights against unlawful copying. Creatives can also use tools such as Tineye.com or Fairshare to search for copies of their work online.

Be prepared for your copyright cases

Even in more serious cases which need to go to court, you can now confidently present your cases in court without having to worry about not being prepared. The prospects of winning the case always favour the better prepared party.

The delivery of legal services in the new economy is changing rapidly with the use of new technologies. One-to-one consultations are being replaced with online forums and legal information sites. Proactive dispute resolution is replacing expensive litigation in the courts.

Most importantly, more creatives can now have access to legal protection without unnecessary hassle and expense. It seems times are changing for the resourceful creative… and clearly for the better. Whilst our copyrights have always been our rights – we are moving closer to a world in which these can be enforced without incurring unbearable expenses and wasting precious time. The first step to the creative freedom that this provides is simply spending a few moments searching the web to find solutions that will work for you.