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Why Your Application Needs Copyright Detection

Copyright Detection

The widespread use of the Internet as a means of gathering information was a permanent game-changer for copyright laws. As a CTO, developer, or product manager at a company that primarily conducts business online, it’s up to you to understand what you must do to avoid infringing on the copyright protection of others as well as protect your own online content.

Federal law provides automatic copyright protection to any creative work produced after 1978 in a tangible format. That means you don’t have to display a copyright symbol to protect your work. It also means that you need to seek permission from the owner of the work to use it yourself.

Potential Legal Ramifications of Violating Online Copyright

According to the website Copyright.gov, a person who feels someone else has used and benefitted from his or her creative work can file a legal action of infringement. The person or organization filing the motion must prove that a copyright violation has taken place. If proven, the violator is subject to some or all of the following legal consequences:

A successful civil case by the copyright holder will result in the receipt of an injunction. This orders the violator to immediately cease the production or distribution of copyrighted material. Non-compliance with an injunction will put the violator in contempt of court and a warrant will go out for his or her arrest. Some common examples of online copyright violation include downloading and distributing music protected by copyright, using photos without permission, and printing and then subsequently selling copies of an eBook without permission from the author.

A Cautionary Tale

A new marketing company, eager to make its mark in the online world, finds and uses beautiful images found online on its own website. While it quickly earned the company new business, it never had permission to use the images in the first place. The owner learned of the copyright violation and took the marketing agency to civil court. In addition to immediately having to cease using the images, the defendant in the case had to pay damages and legal fees to the copyright owner as well as all profits earned by using the photos. The agency ruined its reputation in the process and quickly went out of business.

The above agency’s competitor, also a new small business, knew it was in over its head in determining which images it could legally use and which had copyright protection. The owner wisely invested in Filestack’s Image Intelligence that weeded out copyrighted photos before the agency ever considered using them.

You might be asking yourself: what is Filestack’s Image Intelligence?

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Copyright Detection from Filestack

Between filtering incoming content, categorizing it, and assigning it the proper tag, keeping up with copyright issues is challenging and time-consuming. We have removed the redundancy and complexity of this task with Filestack Image Intelligence. Whether you upload one image or a million, our product can tell you immediately whether an image has copyright protection. This tool is invaluable when your organization relies on user-generated content free of copyrights. If you’re looking to increase your workflow’s efficiency in other areas, Filestack’s Image Intelligence includes multiple services:

To get started, you can sign up for free or start a conversation about your use case.

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