This section covers:
  • how to take action on stolen content / copyright infringement - all the steps + reference material
  • copyright infringement and court action - why people have to pay if they infringe copyright - and some examples of some cases concerning "appropriation" and famous artists
  • copyright infringement and content theft - some context in terms of informative articles and posts online

​Note: I'm not a lawyer and you should not rely on any assertions I make as legal advice. I'm just an ordinary artist and writer who is trying to make sense of copyright in relation to visual art - and what artists can do if their copyright is infringed and/or others act in such a way as to create orphan works from their copyright protected artwork. These pages organises links to what seem to me to be relevant websites. If you need the help of a lawyer you should engage a professional.

Take action on stolen content
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The threshold for taking action is:
  • IF it is more likely than not that copying occurred 
  • ​IF the copying site is ranking higher than your site on Google
  • IF the site strips out any information that identifies the content as yours and/or misrepresents content as being theirs
  • AND if the artwork or other content which you think has infringed your copyright is substantially similar to your artwork.
For a copyright case to be valid, the infringer has to have taken a material amount of expression. While this varies from case to case, it is not negligible or de minimis. 
Attorney Scot - You thought we wouldn't notice
WHAT TO DO if your artwork is stolen / plagiarised and your copyright infringed.
Notify the plagiariser (optional)
You can contact the blogger,webmaster and serve a takedown notice i.e. explain they are in breach of copyright - and ask them to remove the content immediately (or within a specific time period eg 24 or 48 hours).

​If I contact somebody who I think has plagiarised in error I tell them what happens next i.e. after 24 hours of my email being sent. (i.e. the process below re contacting web hosts; domain name registrars etc). That generally does the trick.

Whether or not you notify the plagiariser is a judgement call. 

​​Beware of giving away an important email address. I use one used only for copyright notices.
REFERENCE:
Use Whois to find out contact details
If you want to contact third parties you need to have a way of finding out who they are and what their contact details are
  • Do a Lookup using a Whois service to find out the details of the domain name registrar. Ideally you are looking to find out and make a note of the name of the person who registered the site, their email, their registrar, and the name of their host.
  • you also want to identify the contact email or URL for where to report copyright infringement to the domain name registrar
  • ​Bookmark a Whois site so you can use it - and make sure you use the relevant one for country specific domains
REFERENCE:
  • Whois - the world's top and most affordable online identity provider. Just insert the website address and it will generate the name and address of the registrar
  • ICANN WHOIS - this Lookup service gives you the ability to lookup any generic domains, such as "icann.org" to find out the registered domain holder (This is the one I typically use for most domain name extensions except country specific ones)
  • Nominet whois - Nominet is  the official registry for all .UK domain names. 
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This record of a "WhoIs" entry relates to the Case Study in the box further down this page. Note the email address for reporting copyright abuses to the domain name registrar
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This is the Networksolutions.com REPORT ABUSE FORM related to the above WhoIs enquiry. It's pretty standard and asks for the type of info you need to provide
NOTIFY RELEVANT 3RD PARTIES
- who can make a difference

All of the following assumes you are prepared to
  • notify third parties formally
  • AND create screen dumps and pdfs of the copied content
  • AND complete copyright infringement or complaint forms online.

These are people who can really make a difference if the website owner is ignoring you
  • notify Google (see below) and get the copied content removed from the index - make sure you use the right form. Removing Content From Google - Legal Help will help you get to the right place to report content that you would like removed from Google's services under applicable laws.  This might be your last course of action - however my experience is that this is an amazingly effective course of action when used in a communication which tells the infringer what you will do next
  • notify Google Blogger - if somebody is using Blogger to publish copyright infringements of your material you can pursue the matter with Blogger
  • notify the blog software company's site - they must have a way that you can notify them re. legal notices
  • notify the company hosting the website that they are hosting a copyright infringement. That then makes them legally liable as well and often prompts action - such as stopping the hosting of the website. If the hosting company chooses to kill the website - because the website breached its contract with them - the problem instantly goes away.
  • notify the domain name registrar that a website is infringing the terms of registration due to the copyright infringement. You need to issue a DMCA Takedown Notice and then they MUST take action otherwise they are also legally liable.
  • notify the advertisers e.g. Google AdSense - they're often a very good way of taking out a site which is copying you. Certainly most advertisers take a very dim view of their adverts being hosted on a site which you are going to notify Google needs to removed from Google's index.
It is Google's policy to comply with notices of copyright infringement pursuant to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. To read more about our copyright policies and the requirements of a complete notice, please visit our Copyright Help Center. 
REFERENCE:
Below are links to specific sites on Google which enable you to progress 
These are articles about what to do if somebody takes your content
Anybody who thinks Google never ever does anything about infringement of copyright might like to read this TRANSPARENCY REPORT from Google

Below the image summarises the 4,598,999,356 URLs which were identified to be delisted!
If you've been affected by Copyright Infringement, ask yourself DID YOU REPORT IT TO GOOGLE?
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From the Google Transparency Report - re requests to delist URLs
SUBMIT A COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT NOTICE
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NAME AND SHAME
​If the person is well known and taking your content - and has done nothing about it, you might want to call them out publicly on it.

A number of artists' groups have a particularly effective way of calling out individuals via Facebook where they basically swarm and comment constantly until the content is removed.
  • Shame the suckers! – If all else fails, and they are especially egregious. Name and shame is an effective way to deal with them. Highlighting their activities is the first step in getting the site removed. Darren Rowse | Problogger
PUBLICISE THE INFRINGEMENT
​Notify people who will record the infringement
Highlighting wrong-doing (if you are sure that this is what it is) on the Internet can be very effective, especially if it goes viral. The references can linger long.

Sometimes the most effective thing to do is to highlight what has happened on a third party website - such as the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

Sometimes people will record what has happened even if you don't ask them to.

It's always important to use the word alleged if you are unclear of the facts and want to write about a case of alleged infringement.
REFERENCE:
  • Chilling Effects Clearinghouse - The Chilling Effects database collects and analyzes legal complaints and requests for removal of online materials, helping Internet users to know their rights and understand the law.
  • You Thought We Wouldn't Notice… but we did… - A blog which is dedicated to pointing out those things that give you that feeling of haven’t I seen that somewhere before?”
  • Making a Mark: Art competitions and copyright - the AWS Gold Medal debate - This is a lengthy post highlighting issues relating to the use of reference photographs for artwork and is of relevance to art societies which have to deal with disputes about copyright and artists who enter art competitions. It also records the viral response to an alleged infringement.
LEGAL ACTION
Recover any financial losses
This can be expensive and, in general, you don't want to go there. There's a lot that can be done before you need to think about employing a lawyer.

Sometimes it can be better to write off a copyright infringement to experience - and then take action to make sure it doesn't happen again.

​However if somebody is making money off your artwork you can seek recovery of all income made and punitive damages and recover your legal expenses
REFERENCE:
  • Intellectual Property Protection - Recover losses due to infringement of a photographer's work
  • ImageRights - ImageRights Get Paid for Your Work It's your image. You shot it. You created it. You own it. Now get paid for it.
CHANGE YOUR PRACTICE
Take action to retain control of your images
This can be relatively simple (eg watermarking images) or you can invent an entire structure to prove that your property rights are being infringed.

Banksy came up with a brilliant way of proving whether or not a piece is created by him - his Instagram is the only place he publishes his creations. Plus he and his advisers have devised a legal structure to take counterfeiters to court for infringing his trademark.
REFERENCE
  • How Banksy retains control - when you're an artist who cannot be identified, how do you maintain control of those seeking to counterfeit your art? Note this mainly relates to trademark rather than copyright infringement.
CASE STUDY: A successful outcome

​Is your artwork on the "National Wildlife & Nature Gallery" website? is about a scam website which was taken down successfully in a few hours.

The website was identified by Harriet Mead, President of the Society of Wildlife Artists as containing images of her own artwork and those of other artists she knew. 

Together we followed a basic form of the approach I advocate above (you can read about it in the blog post) and four hours after we started, the site was taken down and the Twitter account was deleted.

It's helpful if you can have people dedicated to different tasks
  • Harriet worked out who the artists were and contacted as many as she could
  • I did the technical end - finding/sharing the abuse forms and writing the blog post to highlight the problem website and how to report abuse
  • the artists filed abuse reports
Even if the owner had not taken it down, the web host or domain registrar would have pulled the plug - which is why this is a highly effective way of resolving scams.
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Part of the Home Page
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Received four hours after my first email to the owner

LEARNING POINTS
  • You do NOT need a lawyer to get a website taken down or your artwork removed
  • Follow the process (see above)
  • It helps a lot if you are plugged into a network of artists whose copyright has also been infringed - and wildlife/animal/equine artists are very effective at networking!
ADVERTS
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Copyright Infringement and Content Theft
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A variety of bloggers and others have provided useful posts about copyright and how to handle copyright theft.

Below are a number of useful posts categorised by their main topic of interest.  Do please let me know if you find any good new posts to add to this list!
freedom of expression is very much skin to freedom of speech. Both are absolutely NOT "absolute" - both are hedged in by a number of conventions expressed in law. 
Plagiarise at your peril - the Luc Tuymans case
Copyright and plagiarism in general
  • Dear Rich: Nolo's Intellectual Property Blog - The Dear Rich staff provides easy-to-understand answers to questions about copyright, trademarks and patents (and related law).
  • PlagiarismToday - An excellent blog by somebody who is not a lawyer but rather a legally-minded Webmaster/Writer frustrated with the plague of plagiarism online and doing something about it.
  • Why Your Copyright Protection is Second Rate - PlagiarismToday - the entire copyright system in the United States is tilted to favor big copyright.....This system ensures that individuals have almost no protection of their works while corporations are free to sue for massive amounts of money. 
Copyright Infringement: Artwork
Content theft: Hijacking, Spam and Splogs
Website Practices which cause concern
  • Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket - Plagiarism Today - PhotoBucket, the Web's largest image sharing service, has been drawing criticism from a growing number of artists over its practices regarding copyrighted material. At issue specifically are two elements of PhotoBucket's services. 
Websites with better practices

What to do if you are accused of copyright infringement
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It's Your Work: Prove It | The Blog Herald - What to do when a website accuses you of infringing copyright because somebody else has uploaded your work to their site. It also discusses non-repudiation services