With the vast amount of information that businesses have access to growing by the day, all companies must be aware of the online copyright law and how it affects their current content. 

Every modern business needs to focus on brand and monitor its representation in the digital world. Companies with a digital presence utilize a content calendar to schedule when they share information they believe their ideal customer finds most valuable. 

We are a marketing agency always looking to add value; this post continues that tradition by sharing how business owners can benefit from the DMCA and discusses the importance of having a copyright policy in place when releasing content. 

What is the DMCA?

DMCA is an acronym for the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” DMCA is a copyright law introduced in the US in 1998 to protect digital content from being redistributed. 

Other names for the DMCA are DRM or Digital Rights Management. 

The goal of DMCA is to protect a business’s content from being redistributed. 

What is Copyright Infringement?

Copyright infringement occurs when a website directly copies or creates content that has been protected by copyright. A business must ask the original owner for permission to use original content to avoid copyright infringement. 

What Does The DMCA Do?

DMCA increases penalties for copyright infringements against your website.

The DMCA criminalizes production, content, and services from being shared without the original owner’s formal agreement.

Trying to find a workaround to use copyrighted work is also prohibited. 

2 DMCA controversies.

1) It includes outrageous penalties

If you violate the DMCA, you could face imprisonment for up to five years in jail and/or additional fines up to $500,000 for a first offense. Those who are repeat offenders could face up to ten years in prison and fines up to one million dollars. 

Copyright infringement includes downloading movies, music, and other digital content illegally.

2) It’s outdated 

The DMCA enforces old-school laws that don’t fit in today’s digital world. Upon further analysis, there are a lot of ambiguous questions. 

One excellent example is the recreation of memes that are circling social media. There is only one meme originator, but a single meme can have countless variations on the internet. With a meme’s recreation, the question becomes: who is the real originator of the meme?. 

Also, who should pay the copyright fine when caught? Does the individual that owns the photograph or the individual that owns the media on the meme? Because the meme creator has created something new, should there ever be copyright fine?

As you can see, memes cause a lot of ambiguous questions when looking at copyright laws. 

How Is The DMCA Beneficial For Your Business?

The primary reason businesses should care about the DMCA is because it prevents others from stealing content from your website.

As a business, you most likely spend a considerable amount of money and time investing in creating a content-rich website. What would you do if you found out that similar businesses and direct competitors copy content from your website?

If you discover your content’s redistribution, the best thing to do is ask the copycat to remove the copyrighted content. If they refuse to remove the copied content, it is best to hire an intellectual property and copyright lawyer. 

Why Do Businesses Steal Content?

In the SEO world, website managers may try to steal content to rank for new keywords on their site. Spotting cases of copyright infringement as early as possible is essential to maintaining your competitive edge online. 

The team at Algorithmic Global wants you to think about a system to track, monitor, and resolve copyright infringement. There is a great free resource called Copyscape. The Copyscape website allows you to input your domain and scans all known websites for plagiarism. 

We use Copyscape to monitor our clients’ content and ensure it doesn’t appear on any competitors’ site. 

Google offers a measure of protection against copycats–they will penalize a website for duplicate and plagiarized content.

As an SEO company, we advise you to create original content. We have included multiple blogs on creating original content using proven methods to rank a website. When you create content, remember to keep it simple and to think about questions a typical user may ask. 

Including A DMCA Policy On Your Website

A DMCA policy can be implemented on the Terms of Use page, or you can create a standalone DMCA policy for your site. If you decide to create a standalone policy, make sure to reference and link so that it is easy to locate. If needed, you can hire a web development company to draft a DMCA policy or a Terms of Use page for your site.Contact us today if you are looking for a web development company to make you a new website that will fall under DCMA’s protection. We have built a reputation in the construction and restoration industry but are always interested in working with businesses in new niches.