Ogle Your Google

How often do you “google” yourself? Or have you even thought of it? You should be googling yourself for more reasons that giving your writing ego a boost. I received a note a few weeks back from a member who googled herself and found an article she wrote illegally posted to a website. She wrote to me wondering what she should do.

I told her it really depends on the situation. She first must determine if she owns the copyright (hopefully so). Copyright violation is never ok, but I first evaluate my article to determine if it has reslant and resell potential. If it does, I send a letter to the contact on the website advising them that they are in violation of the copyright and I ask them to remove the article. This usually does the trick. If it doesn’t, I send a letter advising I will seek further remedy – I’ve never had to.

If I don’t believe I can sell the article elsewhere, I send a letter advising them of my fee to use the article for a period of 12 months on their site, with directions to send payment. The other option is to remove it. In rare instances, if it is a charitable organization using my article, I will send them a letter advising them of the copyright violation, but allowing permission to continue to use the article.

For the types of articles I write with local and regional interest, as well as local business angles, I mainly find the people violating my copyright are the subjects of the stories or the businesses I’m writing about. At first it was hard for me to write a business and tell them they couldn’t use an article about them in their promotional materials, but then I realized if they were to commission an article from a PR firm, it would cost them a lot more than my user fee.

So, what do you do? Do you ogle your google and if so, how do you respond when you find copyright violations of your work?

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Coming soon...Lots of great news for SPJ's Independent Journalists!

Happy Writing,

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell