Currently, copyright and the Internet may coexist in harmony in Kazakhstan
Is it possible to protect your authorship when cybercrime flourishes?
Some things can’t be bought, but it is possible to steal anything.
Thomas Edison is known as the man who invented the incandescent lamp. And, although the exploratory work in this field had already been conducted around the world (including Russia) ten years prior to his discovery, it is Edison who is considered the father of modern power industry. People are not confused by the fact that the great American supported the use of direct current, while at the time the whole world was confident in the prospects for alternating current.
But the priority has since been given to Edison for ever, and nobody is going to dispute it. That’s because Edison, being entrepreneurially-inclined, developed the entire auxiliary system for electric lighting – sockets, generators, transmitters, etc. The main thing – he patented it.
He patented a large number of inventions, thus it allowed him not only to create one of the largest electric companies in North America, in which such minds as Nikola Tesla and Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky worked for some time, but also to leave a mark in history. Even if you are not going to mark a place for yourself in the history books, and you simply want to get money for your ideas and work, it is well worth to study Edison’s example carefully.
Nowadays, producers of content of any kind (design layouts, simple ringtones for phones, wedding photo shoots, or even jokes for stand-up performances) faces the problem of quick leakage of their works to the worldwide web. As a result of that, anyone can use you works, and what’s worse – on a giveaway basis. Moreover, some particularly shameless persons will be able to take credit for your creations and even try to get money for them instead of you. It’s quite disappointing, admit it.
You have spent several thousand hours to study optical exposure characteristics, composition and other technical aspects. You have purchased expensive equipment, and found the most beautiful models. Processing of the resulting photos took a lifetime. And then some John Doe from noplaceville publishes the resulting photo in his portfolio somewhere on Facebook and steals your potential clients using of your own masterpiece.
The problem is that in order to become popular and identifiable, a modern author, be it a photographer, a designer, an artist or (if you will) a journalist, has to publish their works on the Web. Otherwise, you won’t get any publicity, I guess.
This case is similar to studies at a college: initially, the student works on reputation, and then reputation works for the student. Of course, it is good when the public is informed about the original source. But there are very few famous photographers and designers who have earned a prominent name. What should average professionals do in order to be in trend and not lose their achievements?
As it turned out, there are many ways to do that.
And the law is always on the author’s side.
The Kazakh Copyright and Related Rights Law has now been in effect for more than two decades. It fully complies with the requirements of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Moreover, since January 1, 2015, criminal (instead of administrative) liability is envisioned for copyright infringement.
In addition to the right holder’s damages, assessed by a special commission and fixed by a court decision, the violator will have to pay a significant fine equal to at least 100 times the MCI and may be brought to correctional or community labour for up to 120 hours. You have only to prove that the work is really yours, and the violator has used it illegally. Here’s the procedure to follow.
First of all, it is necessary to keep all source materials and intermediate records. Or, better still, you should record each individual finished work on a CD and finalize it. It means that no one will be able to modify it. Having the final version of your product on hand as well as all intermediate and initial versions thereof, you will always be able to demonstrate them in court. By contrast, the violator will provide only the final version.
It primarily concerns musical works, complex graphic and engineering works. According to the data provided by Statista (a US company), the right holders sustain the greatest losses from the illegal use of such works; for the period 2015-2016, such losses are estimated at $102 mln. USD in the United States alone. Moreover, the right holders were not able to prove their priority in more than 50% of cases. This is due to many files leaking to the Web from virus-infected computers. And equipment protection is already a problem of the right holders themselves.
Therefore, even the availability of source materials is not a cure-all solution to retain copyright. Moreover, for example, it is not physically feasible for a photographer to record every single photo on a separate disc. There are some much more effective ways to protect their intellectual property. First, you need to take photos in RAW format. Absolutely all cameras of more or less professional level support this format and even offer an option of photo recording in two formats: RAW and JPEG. At the same time, the source image in RAW format should not be sent to anyone, even to the customer. When reaching a certain amount of images, they also should be recorded on a disc, which should be finalized.
A very effective method is creation of a watermark, which cannot be removed without removing a part of the image. On a watermark, the name or a nickname of the photographer is usually indicated so that the customer is able to find the author on the web, if necessary, and order the photo he likes from the author. Obviously, in this situation, the photo comes at a price. In addition, you should write your name and contacts in the camera settings. In this case, this information will be specified on each photo, which simplifies litigation to a great extent.
Finally, if you work on a permanent basis with any publisher or Internet portal, you can execute a long-term contract with it. Thus, you will receive a certain fixed amount for your work, and the partner organization will already be in charge of copyright protection.
SOURCE: MK-KZ
