I am not completely helpless and can defend myself if my house is burned down by neighbors or my employer violates labor laws. I have an excellent lawyer who has not leaked a single problem that he took on. But when it comes to copyright, I fall into a coma. I didn't count how many times I saw my texts online, how many plans for publications and educational programs I “presented” to “indecisive” employers, and once my photo in the style of Half-Life 2 on a billboard advertised a clothing store for a month.
But thinking about arranging a showdown of "whose scoop" is so sickening that I never even tried to do something about it. And after listening to friends, I quickly realized that about "urgently to the court!" chatters are those who have no real experience. Whoever really happened to sue, remember it as a traumatic and extremely ruinous experiment, they do not like to talk about it and do not want to repeat it.
But then I came across a story, how Maxim Ilyakhov, without noise, dust and fainting, took and defended the rights to the book "Write, Shorten" from the "info-businessman from Bali" Daniil Galt. He did not defend himself, of course, with lawyers, but he was able, survived and received 300 thousand from the robber for lost profits and damage to business reputation.
The amount, in my opinion, is very small. In the States, they would charge the full cost of the downloaded books, plus a double tariff for the attempt itself.Here, victory has more of a pedagogical function: after giving the money, the pirate will think (probably) whether he needs such risks, he will dissuade his friends, and then, a step or two, and it will become unfashionable to sell someone else's. Can you dream?
Well, okay, in the situation with the book and the theoretically missed millionth profit, everything is more or less clear, there the publishing house can intervene, and the damage is obvious. Is there a lot of lost profits from a picture or an article on the Internet? Even if you succeed in proving your case, the compensation will probably not even cover the costs of lawyers. I was fascinated by the questions of how to defend my rights to texts, illustrations and mailings to mere mortals, whether to defend at all and how not to feel like a helpless idiot.
Suddenly it turned out that I know the lawyer Alexei Bashuk, who led the whole story. Once I saw a message in the chat that the possessive pronoun "eyny" in Kursk has a function of time. I admired. And after a couple of months I did a training on possessive pronouns and asked the author if the screen could be used. It turned out that during this time the phrase in the chat turned into an article about Kursk , that is, it became a full-fledged object of copyright. The author of the message and article was Albert Ein ... Alexey.
I realized that this is a sign, and I simply have to figure out how to defend my rights without feeling like an idiot. Therefore, I came to Alexey with questions, he answered them, and I decided not to keep this knowledge in myself. I'll make a reservation right away, it's not about cultivating a litigation in yourself and immediately running to sue everyone.
Alexey, here's the situation: a person sees his text or illustration on a random website. Usually he will sigh, complain to his friends, they will wisely advise him to go to court, and that will be the end of it. I understand pirates - why not use someone else's if no one is against it. What is there to do? Here are the steps, for the most helpless.
The first thing that is logical to do is just write a claim. See who is responsible for the publication: if this is a site, then usually there is a feedback form, if it is in social networks, then to the owner of the page. You can write to the technical support of the social network itself: forms for complaints about copyright are almost everywhere provided.
You, without consulting with lawyers who are not particularly needed here, just take and write a regular letter to e-mail or in a personal: “Hello, you have my work published on this page, I previously published it there, the rights to it belongs to me in accordance with paragraph 4 of Article 1259 of the Civil Code ”.
According to the civil code, the emergence of copyright does not require registration and other formalities.You send a letter and you look at the reaction of the offender. In most cases, the intruder simply deletes everything. If not deleted, then the question arises: is it worth going to sue or not? The picture is as follows: if the company violated the rights, for example, published your photo or article on its website, then it makes sense to sue. There is a defendant here, you can find him, he most likely has money in his accounts.
In this case, it makes sense to go to a specialized lawyer, to make a website inspection protocol at a notary in order to fix the violation. This is necessary in case the offender decides to quietly delete the post and say that it was.
Compensation for copyright is being collected - this is a common judicial routine, anyone can google these courts and make sure.
Depending on how many objects there were, whether they were changed or not, the compensation is different. For a photograph it is usually 20, 30 or 50 thousand for each.The second option is when the publication was posted by an unknown individual. There is only one scenario here: apply to the Moscow City Court with a claim for copyright protection, and attach to it a request for securing the claim by blocking access to the site through Roskomnadzor. The Moscow City Court blocks access to the domain, and then it will consider your claim for copyright protection.
It is clear that these lawsuits do not end with anything, and all this is done only in order to block access to the site, but this is quite a working tool.What else is bad when the violator is a "physicist": you never know who is there, on the other side. There may be a schoolboy. Or a grandfather who has a heart attack when he sees a pre-trial claim. It's Complicated. Therefore, they usually only sue when the violator is a company or an entrepreneur. Russian, of course. Then there is a real chance to collect something.
Another situation: the author creates an article or illustration for the client, the client makes comments, then says: no, something is somehow wrong, thanks, but no. And a week later he publishes an article. What to do? The author, of course, did not publish a custom article on his blog and did not endorse the draft with a notary.
In this situation, you are unlikely to prove anything, therefore the iron rule: always conclude a copyright contract... The author will have a terms of reference, according to which he writes an article or draws a picture. All correspondence should be done in e-mail: we exchanged scans, agreed that the scans are legally binding. About what to write in contracts so that they have legal force, I recently wrote in my TG channel .
We signed an agreement - and then you exchange all the drafts and sketches by mail. If the client used the article without paying, then he violated the exclusive right, he is an ordinary violator, and then we return to the previous point and receive compensation. In disputable situations, we present the correspondence as evidence of the transfer of data.
There is even a slight bias in the legislation towards the interests of the author: if the contract does not indicate that the exclusive right to the work is transferred to the customer, then he will receive only a license, that is, the right to use the article, and nothing else. If the client has downloaded and signed a template agreement from the Internet without looking at the transfer of exclusive rights, the author can sell this work a million more times.
The third situation, topical: mailing. A person writes a newsletter or publishes tips on a TG channel, and a subscriber, in its simplicity, processes each issue into an article, and then collects them all into a training course and sells. You had to protect copyright holders in such a situation, what would you advise?
I have not had such cases in practice, and I have not seen any courts either. That is, if there were such disputes, they were all resolved at the level of pre-trial resolution of the conflict. There is a peculiarity in copyright disputes: there are very few courts, because in 90% of cases the parties agree in a pre-trial procedure.
Therefore, from the general principles of law, the answer is this: everything depends on how much a person has reworked the original work.
It is not forbidden to get inspired by an idea and write your own article, the whole world stands on this. And if he stupidly read someone else's article, that is, the sequence of thought remained the same, the sentences coincide in places and the examples are the same , then he is an infringer, and you have copyright.In the story with the book, I got the impression that getting involved in a fight is worth it only if many conditions are met: a trademark is registered, several million copies have been downloaded, and the pirate has money. Does this mean that certain texts and pictures can be stolen with impunity, and nothing threatens the pirates-rogue, anyway you cannot prove the damage and you won’t knock out money?
Registering a trademark for a book is an optional condition for protecting a work. In our case, the registration of a trademark helped us to note the rudeness of the violation and increase the calculation of damage. Without it, we would have counted the damage of 300 thousand, and so we counted it at 700.
With private pirates, there really is no point in going to court: firstly, they are difficult to find, and secondly, they may simply not have the money to pay. Therefore, in court they fight with companies and entrepreneurs, and lone pirates are asked to remove someone else's property - and they agree . Yes, there is a widespread opinion on the Internet, they say, "copyright does not work, and torrents have everything." But in fact, it is there until the copyright holder asked to delete it.
Here's a living example: I recently removed pirated copies of Write, Cut from the Internet. The book did not come out in electronic form, so at first it was poorly scanned, then crookedly formatted and then posted in many places. Here are the statistics: 39 of the 42 sites, the book was immediately deleted.
If not, please block the site through Roskomnadzor. Running after them and demanding money is really stupid. It's another matter if a pirate is a corporation or an entrepreneur - here we are deploying a full-scale pre-trial claim, courts and so on.
In the case of the book, the work of a notary cost 50 thousand, another 50 - legal support. If you went to court, what time would the whole process be?
Usually lawyers calculate the cost of a court like this. One hundred thousand is the first instance: a preliminary court hearing, possibly a second preliminary court hearing, a main court hearing and one more. One instance is at least three or four courts, almost never less. You need to go to each of them, prepare documents, often - go to another city. But usually there is no problem to collect these costs from the losing party, if not all, then at least part.
How do you like this plan, let's call it "Robinson Crusoe's method": to bring one process to the end, even without a chance to come out in profit, and then demonstrate the charred carcass of a pirate for the edification of others?
(Laughs) Well, yes, that's how it usually works. In general, this is what we are doing now: we told this story on social networks so that others would not disdain.
What if all the courts have passed, everything has been proven, and the defendant sits in his Bali and ignores everything?
An important rule: you shouldn't get involved in lawsuits where you don't know how to get the defendant. Why did we go to fight in the case of Galt: he has citizenship in Russia, registration and individual entrepreneurship. If there is a registration, it means that there is property, bank accounts from which he pays taxes - you can work with this. If you are going to sue a foreign company or, even worse, a foreign citizen, where it is generally not clear what is happening on the other side, it is better not to go there.
There are many fables about the fact that the defendant, having lost the court, will immediately declare himself bankrupt and easily escape responsibility. In fact, this is unlikely. Due to a fine of 300 thousand, neither the company, nor even the "physicist" will most likely not go bankrupt, because the normal bankruptcy of an individual, where the bankruptcy manager is engaged in something, and not just submits stereotyped papers, in itself costs 200-400 thousand , plus imposes a sea of restrictions on bankruptcy. Everything there is not at all as simple as advertised by those who are engaged in bankruptcy of individuals for the first day.
And an important point: yes, there may be a situation in which you will not be able to defend your rights. For example, out of ten offenders, seven will remove your work from their site at first request, two more will pay compensation after a trial or pre-trial agreement, and you cannot do anything with one. If you write or draw and get any money for it - you are an entrepreneur, this is not a tragedy, but just ordinary risks, they must also be taken into account.
A question of life and death - what and how to register rights? What to patent, what to certify in other ways, and what to leave that way?
Inventions and trademarks are patented, I have a series of articles about this, I have collected them all together on my website - bashuk.ru. If you write texts or draw illustrations, then there is nothing to patent there, but you can certify the date on the work in order to prove authorship if necessary. You can donate the program at Rospatent. Any objects of copyright can be certified in the system of the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO PROOF. You can also do this at a notary, in the RAO, or even by sending letters to yourself, I have a detailed article about this and a separate article on how to protect the code .
It is expensive to certify a work by a notary, and by Russian Post it is strange, although theoretically possible. A couple of months ago, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - the UN organization and international administrator for intellectual property - launched the online service WIPO PROOF . With its help, you can deposit an object of copyright: that is, fix that on this date you have this work. Depositing costs about 1.5 thousand rubles, the system is simple, and everything is online. Nothing prevents you from collecting everything you did once a month and depositing it with WIPO. I also have a detailed analysis of this .
When is it necessary to seek help from legal experts, and when is a person able to cope on his own?
It makes sense to go to a lawyer if you seriously want to go to the end, to sue, to recover compensation. But to write to violators: "Hello, this is my work", the author himself may well, for this you do not need to know and bring a million laws. If people on the other side are adequate, they will remove everything anyway. And if not, then go to a lawyer.
Do you often infringe on your copyright? Are you protecting everything? What's the most striking story ever?
They constantly attack, sometimes they rewrite, sometimes they just redraw the entire site. As funny as it sounds, intellectual property lawyers often violate other people's rights. There was a great story when I went to the website of a woman who is engaged in trademark registration, and saw a video where she pronounces the text of my video. It was only her name instead of mine. The first time I saw someone "starred in my role."
I decided it was too much fun to ignore. Therefore, I called the phone, which she offered to contact. And he said: "My video was re-shot, will you help me protect my rights?" "Sure! - she said. - We must fight! Send materials, we will calculate the budget and terms! "When I sent her both videos, she called back herself, scolded the irresponsible contractors who were to blame for everything (this was expected), apologized and promised to remove everything. She only removed the video from the site, and left it on her YouTube channel. I didn't try to persuade her. I posted it to the YouTube admin area, and it got blocked.
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The answer will be drawn to the book. Where does this opinion come from that it is a shame to defend your rights? Firstly, many people believe that if a ruble was stolen from a person, then he now has one ruble less, and if the illustration was copied, then it did not disappear from him anywhere: after all, his illustration was with him. Secondly, the position of free copying is supported mainly by people who do not create anything: do not write music, do not draw, do not make films. Yes, they work somewhere, but they are not engaged in active creativity. If such a person created something valuable, he would probably be the first to go to find out how to recover compensation for the violation. Thirdly, it is generally accepted in our country to romanticize illegal things.
And obviously, the creators of intellectual property should change this, nothing will change by itself. I am interested in European and American intellectual property law, everything is different there. Recently I read an English article where the author writes: "Imagine that you made an invention, filed a preliminary patent application, then told your friends, they suggested improvements, but the application cannot be changed." And it was not the preliminary patent application that struck me, which, by the way, does not exist in Russia.
It was amazing that he took it for granted that he first filed a patent and then told friends.It's not like that with us at all! With us, if a person invents something, he usually first tells everyone about it, then writes an article, publishes in a collection, receives a grant, defends a thesis, and then, three years later, he finally remembers patents. And there it is too late to patent: if the information was published, then there is nothing new in it, even if the author himself published it. That is, our level of legal awareness in this area is slightly different, it is lower. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in Russia copyright is a relatively young sphere. In the Soviet Union, copyright was protected, as it were, but in Europe and the United States, copyright developed at a completely different pace.
How can this be changed? It is important to talk about cases where rights have been protected. Now there is very little information about how all this works: there is almost no court practice, lawyers have tasks that are more important than writing articles at night about how they defended copyright. Why would it be fashionable if no one talks about it? Gradually, in 20-30 years, we will probably come to the model that exists in Europe, when everyone has a basic knowledge of what intellectual property is. So far, this is not the case at all, but I hope we can change that.
Hope you found it helpful. It’s definitely brighter on my globe. The problem that excites me in this story: "relieve the spasm", that stupor when you were robbed, but what to do is unclear. As a result, the person freezes and does nothing. This stupor is what pirates feed on.
PS The rights to this text belong to me, my copyright arose at the time of publication. The illustration also belongs to me, this right arose at the moment when I paid for the artist's work. The knowledge of what to do if your intellectual property is claimed is now yours, and you can freely distribute it, retelling it in your own words or quotations with reference to the author and source.
Svetlana Bolgova accepted the challenge of Glavred and is now exploring the question of how to protect copyright.