by Claire Keet Pollock and Sinal Govender, Co-Founders of pop.law
Today’s story of ‘life and law’ is enough to make any digital business owner’s eyeballs shrink to the size of raisins. If you own any online assets - a website, an online store, a social media feed - then this story might help you avoid pricey legal fees one day if the unthinkable happens: someone blatantly uses your content for their own commercial purposes without your permission.
This story was shared with us by Tarryn James, the founder of Yoga South Africa. Yoga South Africa is our country’s leading yoga resource. It’s been around for yonks. Every yoga teacher who has ever bent themselves into a pretzel knows about it. It’s a household name. Amongst other things, Yoga South Africa has a directory of yoga teachers to help students find and connect with them.
Imagine Tarryn’s shock when she woke up one morning to a message from a friend saying: “Ummmmm… not sure if you’ve seen… but the whole Yoga South Africa directory has been copied outright on another website”. Thankfully, as a highly experienced yoga teacher, Tarryn’s first reaction was to take a deep breath in, instead of any number of other (very justified) reactions.
So what does one do? As it turns out, without one iota of legal help, Tarryn followed textbook protocol. (We’re convinced that her yoga training is the very thing that helped her keep such a level head!).
Step one:
Inform your users about the breach
The first thing that Tarryn did was to reach out to everyone listed on the directory to let them know what had happened. The information duplicated on the copycat website was their personal information and, though they’d given Tarryn consent to share their details on Yoga South Africa, they’d certainly not signed up to have their details shared elsewhere. Tarryn told them what steps she was taking to sort out the situation and opened up the channel of communication so that her users had as much information as possible.
Step two:
Try a non-lawyer approach first
The second thing that Tarryn did was reach out to the copycat website owners. Instead of lawyering up and getting hectic, she tried a friendly (but firm) approach. She had to hunt the internet high and low for contact details of the copycat website. They weren’t listed on the site - no surprises there. She eventually messaged them on Facebook. Tarryn sent an amicable message alerting them to the fact that what they’d done was not cool, with a request to please take immediate action to remove the unlawful content. There is always legal help to be gotten. But sometimes, taking a calm, cool headed approach is a good first place to start. And it doesn’t cost a cent. Keep it factual; keep it unemotional. You don’t always need to come out the blocks with a pack of lawyers and scary letters to get the ball rolling.
This story has a happy ending. Within 24 hours of being told about her site being copied, the situation was resolved. The copycat site removed the information they’d taken from Yoga South Africa and all was right again in the world. Intuitively, Tarryn did exactly what pop.law would have advised her to do.
But what could have happened if the copycats didn’t respond well to Tarryn’s polite request? Many business owners think that short of getting lawyers involved to threaten scary court action, the only other option is to take it on the chin and move on. Or, worse, to take to social media to name and shame the offenders.
Luckily for us, social media platforms have their own conflict resolution processes. If someone is using your material on a social media platform, you can reach out through the platform itself and file a complaint. If you can prove that the material being copied is yours, the platform should investigate the complaint with the offender and if they are unable to justify their use, the platform can suspend or terminate their account.
In addition, most internet service providers subscribe to a code of conduct that prohibits unlawful use of other’s material. With some digging, you can find out who is hosting that website and submit a complaint directly to them to take further action.
You definitely do not need to go straight to lawyers or roll over and let copycats get away with their behaviour. That said, Tarryn’s situation and really all successful resolutions start with the business owners themselves. You must be sure and able to prove that the material being copied is yours. This can only be done if you have created the content yourself, or if you have appropriate contracts in place with people who have created content on your behalf.
We recommend that every business owner takes a look around their business to see if they would be able to react as confidently and calmly as Tarryn if something similar happens to them, rather than passively waiting for something awful to happen before realising that you don’t actually own your business content in the first place.
Sinal Govender and Claire Keet are co-founders of pop.law, a new legal consultancy. pop.law is an online platform democratizing law for everyday people, across Africa, by leveraging partnerships and technology to educate and offer affordable, personal digital legal services. At pop.law the team offers affordable, accessible digital legal products and services. Legal consultations are all done digitally or over the phone. pop.law leverages digital technology to provide 'face-to-face' and personalized legal counsel without the high overheads of a brick and mortar law firm.
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