On 16 April 2018 at 06:23, Rob Speer rob@luminoso.com wrote:
Right, this worries me too.
I know that Wikimedia doesn't enforce the copyright on the content themselves, because they don't hold the relevant copyrights, the authors do. But there seems to be no guidance for what _anyone_ can do to address and correct large-scale violations.
Because is you know enough about copyright law to be able to do anything you can already answer that question.
So here goes:
*1 be reasonably wealthy or otherwise have access to significant amounts of money for legal costs
*2 Be American. While you can sue for copyright infringement from overseas it greatly complicates matter
*3 Be prepared to use your real name.
*4 Make sure you have registered your work with the U.S. Copyright Office. Not strictly required but it makes things more straightforward and allows you to go for statutory damages
*5 Chose a case where you are pretty much the sole author of the article or image in question.
Got all those ducks in a row? The good news is that most smaller companies will settle at the first threatening letter although you may suffer a certain amount of reputational damage from suing small businesses. If a small company decides to fight and its a fairly straightforward case you are looking at costs of over $100K. More complicated case against a big company? Millions.