Copyright 101 for Online Coaches and Course Creators: Protecting Your Digital Content from Copycats and Infringers

Copyright 101 for Online Coaches and Course Creators: Protecting Your Digital Content from Copycats and Infringers

As an online coach or course creator, you are consistently developing content for your business. You are writing course materials, downloads for your clients and prospective clients, social media posts, advertisements, podcasts, blogs and the list goes on. Without new content to share with the world, you are without a competitive online business. In the online business space your content, which represents your expertise, genius and hard work, can be particularly  vulnerable to copying by others, especially competitors. As an online business owner, there are steps you can take proactively to protect your valuable content from unauthorized use by others. 

What is Copyright?

To understand how you can protect your content, it’s important to understand what copyright protection is and how it applies to your online business. Copyright is one type of a body of legal rights called intellectual property. Other forms of intellectual property include trademarks and patents. At its most basic level, copyright protects original works of authorship by granting exclusive legal rights to that author once the author expresses the work in a tangible form. Copyright protection extends to many different forms of creative expression, including text, images, videos, audio recordings, paintings, photographs, musical compositions, computer programs and blog posts to name a few. An author of an original work obtains copyright protection automatically upon the creation of the work - no registration is required. The copyright protection includes the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, display, perform, and modify the content. 

For copyright protection to attach to a work, two things must happen. First, the work must be original to a human author and have a minimal degree of creativity. The author must have created it herself, without copying it. Second, the work must be fixed in some way, or be captured so that it can be perceived, reproduced or communicated, such as written down or recorded. 

To fully understand what copyright is, it’s also important to understand what copyright is not. Although copyright protection applies when there is a minimal degree of creativity, some things are not considered creative under copyright law: titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; and mere listings of ingredients or contents.  Copyright also does not protect ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, or discoveries, but instead protects only the expression of ideas. This means that an unlimited number of people can have an idea about a topic or a piece of content for their online business, and what is protected is the expression of that idea, not the idea itself. For example, two marketing experts may have similar ideas about how to communicate your message to your audience. The copyright protection for their content comes in how they use their own original thought to express this idea to their customers. 

It’s also important to note that even though some types of expression may not be eligible for copyright protection, such as short phrases and slogans, these types of expression may be eligible for trademark protection, which protects words and marks used in trade with goods or services to indicate the source of the goods and services and distinguish them from the goods and services of others. Trademarks will be a discussion for a future blog post.

Copyright Protection for Digital Content in Your Online Business

In the online business world, your digital content is particularly susceptible to copying. It’s very easy for someone to right click, scan a page and convert the content or otherwise appropriate someone else’s work in the online space. While there clearly are bad actors who are copying content for the purpose of monetizing it for their own businesses, there are many people who don’t understand copyright law and the limitations as to what content is free and available to use. The Internet itself is a place of vast amounts of free content. Search engines like Google host unmeasurable amounts of free content at our fingertips with a few clicks. Online businesses are encouraged to develop free lead magnets as a marketing tool for prospective customers to download. Despite the often free nature of the Internet, online business owners expect there to be a bright line between what is free and readily available online, and what is their protected intellectual property. This confusion doesn’t make stealing someone’s content okay, but it does help explain in some cases why newly minted online business owners may not understand the limits of what is acceptable conduct when it comes to accessing someone else’s content for use in their own businesses. 

Steps to Protect Your Content in Your Online Business

Given the easy accessibility of your digital content, potential misunderstandings about the protected nature of your content and the existence of bad actors online, taking steps to protect your online content is critical to legally protecting your online business. While there is no one solution for every online business,  there are some strategies to consider that can help you safeguard your digital content. 

One step you can take is to display a copyright notice on your digital content. You would do this as follows: Copyright or © [Year][Business Name]. Displaying this in the footer on every page of your website and on all of your digital content puts the world on notice of your ownership of the content and acts as a deterrent against stealing your content. 

A second step you can take is to register your content with the U.S. Copyright Office. Although you have copyright in your work the moment you publish your original content, registering your content provides you with some additional protections. Although it’s not practical to register every piece of content with the U.S. Copyright Office, registering your most important pieces of content, like a signature course or coaching program, gives you added benefits and protections if you need to enforce your copyright and stop someone else from stealing your content. 

A third step you can take is to add a watermark to your images and videos that remains on the image or video unless a proper purchase is made. This lets the world know that this content belongs to you and makes it harder for someone else to use this content and claim it as their own. 

Fourth, you can adopt and publish terms of use on your website. Making your terms of use policy accessible from every page of your website puts users of your website on notice as to permissible use of your website content. 

Finally, your terms of use can include conditions about what types of licenses, if any, you are granting to your website users with any content that they download or purchase from your website and can outline the consequences for breaching your terms of use, such as account suspension and enforcement actions. 

Ongoing Steps to Protect the Content in Your Online Business

Once you take some proactive steps to protect your online content, there are a few things you can do on an ongoing basis to shore up your protection. 

First, you can monitor the Internet for instances of theft or unauthorized use. There are online tools available that help you locate images and software to detect plagiarism. You can set up alerts on your most valuable content and conduct periodic searches to help ensure infringers are not illegally using your original content. 

Second, you can add digital rights management technologies to your website to help prevent copying, downloading or printing. These tools can provide added safeguards that make it much more difficult to copy your content for improper use.

Third, you can contact anyone infringing on your copyright and demand they remove your content, delete it and discontinue any future use. While not all infringement is innocent, there are instances where you can resolve infringement by contacting the infringing party who may quickly abandon the improper  use once they receive your notice. 

Fourth, you can utilize DMCA takedown notices. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) permits an online business owner whose content is being used without authorization to file a notice with the hosting platform to have the content removed. 

Enforcing Rights to Your Copyrighted Content

Even with the best efforts at prevention, your online business content may still be stolen. When this happens, you’ll want to consider and weigh your options. First, you’ll want to document the infringement by taking screenshots and assembling any other relevant data that illustrates the infringement of your digital content. If you decide to pursue legal action, you’ll need evidence to back up your claims. 

Second, consider sending a formal demand letter to the infringer to cease and desist using your copyrighted digital content. Any correspondence you send should identify your rights to the digital content, demand immediate removal and discontinuation of use of the infringing content, provide a deadline for meeting your demands and identify future actions you might take to enforce your rights. 

Third, you can consult an intellectual property attorney. Intellectual property law is a vast and complex area of the law, and there are many nuances in the law and the facts of your situation that will impact your ability to enforce your rights against an infringer. An attorney experienced in intellectual property law can help you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your situation, advise you of the costs and time to pursue an action against the infringer and help you take needed steps ahead of litigation should you elect to pursue that option. 

You are the Leader in Your Content Creation for Your Online Business 

By following the steps outlined above, you’ll be taking important strides to legally protect your online business and your valuable digital content.

As frustrating as it may be to have someone steal your digital content, you need to make decisions as a business owner about how to expend your energy on copycats or infringers. If you are an expert and leader in your industry, you are likely a target for infringers and copycats. Chasing down every perceived instance of infringement will drain your time and your mental and financial resources. If you are leading in your space, you will be the one taking giant steps forward while others are always chasing to catch up. You’ll need to strike a balance between protecting your online business content and moving forward as the expert and leader that you are in your field. 

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