Whenever I speak with a customer I am invariably deluged with questions about how to make their website more prevalent in search results, help them get rid of the deluge of spam messages they are receiving in their e-mail and asked why their digital presence costs so much money to maintain when they used to have an employee who did it as part of their daily work routine.
I then take a look at the fact that their website has not been updated in several years because they don't have access to the login accounts at hosting company and, in many cases, don't even have legal ownership of the domain name.
When I ask them how this happened they look at me like a deer caught in the headlights on a dark road and, invariably, reply, "what do you mean we don't own our domain name? We still receive our e-mail!"
Fortunately, so long as the hosting and domain name registration bills are paid, both the website and e-mail accounts will usually continue to work. Unfortunately, a business in this position does not have any control over what they are paying for and, more often than not, they don't even have a copyright statement on the website.
When I ask them how this happened they look at me like a deer caught in the headlights on a dark road and, invariably, reply, "what do you mean we don't own our domain name? We still receive our e-mail!"
Fortunately, so long as the hosting and domain name registration bills are paid, both the website and e-mail accounts will usually continue to work. Unfortunately, a business in this position does not have any control over what they are paying for and, more often than not, they don't even have a copyright statement on the website.
Why should the ownership of your corporate Internet property
identity be important to you?
Your ownership of corporate information is important because if you are the owner of a company and have any kind of an Internet representation what is posted under your company name is the representation of your business in the digital world. Unfortunately, even placing a valid copyright statement on a website or on a published or printed work does not always protect you from those wordy and very lengthy "digital agreements" which you must agree to, but almost no one ever reads, anytime you setup an online account. So, in order to help protect you, here are some highlights of some of the terms set forth by companies who provide online file storage:
Dropbox, who's terms terms can be found here, says:
Microsoft SkyDrive, who's terms can be found here, says:
At the very least, everything you post publicly should have a copyright statement. The proper format for a copyright statement is:
"Copyright © 2010 - 2013 Lakes Region Historical Society, All Rights Reserved"
Of course, your copyright statement would contain your proper business name and the appropriate year range. If this is the first time something is posted, it may contain only one year.
Photographs and documents should also contain copyright information. How the individual copyrights are embedded in the individual documents and photographs will depend on the software you are using. If you are selling photographs online, consider placing a watermark into the photograph showing both the owner's name and copyright information. This should also be embedded into the meta data for the image file.
No matter how simplistic you make your effort, so long as you note that an article is copyrighted you have made the initial effort to protect yourself and your digital assets from illegal pilferage and use.
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Your ownership of corporate information is important because if you are the owner of a company and have any kind of an Internet representation what is posted under your company name is the representation of your business in the digital world. Unfortunately, even placing a valid copyright statement on a website or on a published or printed work does not always protect you from those wordy and very lengthy "digital agreements" which you must agree to, but almost no one ever reads, anytime you setup an online account. So, in order to help protect you, here are some highlights of some of the terms set forth by companies who provide online file storage:
Dropbox, who's terms terms can be found here, says:
"Your Stuff & Your Privacy: By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below."
Microsoft SkyDrive, who's terms can be found here, says:
"5. Your Content: Except for material that we license to you, we don't claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service."and Google Drive, who's terms can be found here, says:
"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."
At the very least, everything you post publicly should have a copyright statement. The proper format for a copyright statement is:
"Copyright © 2010 - 2013 Lakes Region Historical Society, All Rights Reserved"
Of course, your copyright statement would contain your proper business name and the appropriate year range. If this is the first time something is posted, it may contain only one year.
Photographs and documents should also contain copyright information. How the individual copyrights are embedded in the individual documents and photographs will depend on the software you are using. If you are selling photographs online, consider placing a watermark into the photograph showing both the owner's name and copyright information. This should also be embedded into the meta data for the image file.
No matter how simplistic you make your effort, so long as you note that an article is copyrighted you have made the initial effort to protect yourself and your digital assets from illegal pilferage and use.
===================
Be certain to like us on FaceBook, too.
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