WebGuerrilla - 5:00 pm on Dec 5, 2001 (gmt 0)

Alecto,

I think you've come up with the best strategy.

Try and make them feel guilty and then forget about it. If you've got a quality site, this is only the first of many issues of content theft you'll end up coming across. Save your legal budget for those that will simply steal your complete site.

The reality of the situation is that you really don't have much legal recourse when it comes to someone reproducing a set of links.

Copyright protection would only come into play if they had stole your descriptions. If links alone were enough grounds for a copyright infringement suit, I'm pretty sure Yahoo would have sued the ODP along time ago. :)

Regarding U.S. Copyright Laws,

I'm not sure what Laisha's attorney was referring to when he mentioned a 90 day time limit, but you do not need to file in order to seek damages for infringement.

From the U.S. Copyright Office:[loc.gov ]

HOW TO SECURE A COPYRIGHT Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. "Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed in sheet music (" copies") or in phonograph disks (" phonorecords"), or both.

(edited by: WebGuerrilla at 6:25 pm (gmt) on Dec. 5, 2001)