Safeguarding your digital assets is necessary to maintain your intellectual property, reputation, and privacy. Protecting online content can prevent or at least reduce unauthorized sharing and copying. That increases the lifetime value of your digital asset or online creation and promotes its continued relevance to your business. It can also save your business or person from costly reputational damages. So, are you a business owner or content creator? Do you create and publish content in the digital space? You can use the following tips to protect your online content.
Understand and apply the copyright laws
Copyright laws are put in place to protect your intellectual property online, and it works the same way, regardless of your location. All you have to do is register your work with a relevant copyright office in your area to receive legal protection in case of content theft. Beyond visiting a copyright office, you can also use digital signatures and watermarks to copyright every content you publish online, especially videos, images, infographics, and other visual content. That can deter unauthorized use. Of course, people can still edit such things out, but that only makes it easier for you to apply the necessary copyright laws whenever you notice something using your content without authorization.
It’s advisable to clearly state how people can use your content while you retain ownership rights. You can do this through Creative Commons Licenses.
Protect the content at your organization’s end
Protecting your data from your end is particularly important when partnering with other businesses or working with freelancers, contractors, and external workers. While external workers may recognize your ownership of content, it’s still possible for some misunderstanding to arise. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to address such issues, leading to costly legal ownership battles. For instance, freelancers may feel entitled to use content they created for you as ownership samples when looking for other job opportunities or publish them in their portfolios as owners. You can use a contract with an NDA to protect the data or content from your end. So, what does NDA stand for? It stands for a Non-Disclosure Agreement; you can read more about it. It outlines both parties’ rights regarding content ownership and use, prevents unauthorized use, and protects your data.
Don’t provide any permission to copy your content
Sometimes, the best way to protect your content online is by taking away any permission to copy it. Preventing others from copying it in the first place reduces unauthorized use. This way, it’s easier to determine a breach when you notice your content being used elsewhere, and you can initiate legal proceedings immediately. You can remove the option to copy content in two ways. One, state clearly on your platform that your content is unavailable for copy and indicate the consequences of unapproved usage. The second option is to use certain codes on your website to turn off the right-click feature on any content you don’t want copied. Most platforms like WordPress already have such codes. Such codes can also disable ‘Copy-Paste hotkeys, keeping your text content from being copied without permission.