europeforvisitors - 4:04 pm on May 5, 2002 (gmt 0)

First, you have to understand what can and can't be copyrighted. Ideas aren't subject to copyright; neither are titles, ideas, formulas, and many other things. So many alleged copyright violations aren't violations. For more on this, see:
[benedict.com...]

Of course, there are many blatant copyright violations on the Web. If you find that your text, photos, or other copyrighted material has been used by another Web site, I'd suggest the following sequence of actions:

1) Write to the Webmaster. Be polite but firm; state that such-and-such is copyrighted material, and that you expect it to be removed or paid for (at whatever rate you'd like to set) by such-and-such a date.

2) If that fails, write to the offender's ISP and explain the problem. Supply URLs of the offending pages, refer the ISP to the corresponding pages on your site, and state that you want the offending material removed immediately in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

3) If that fails, you can check to see if the offending pages are in search engines, and you can then file a complaint with the search engines, demanding that they remove their links to the offending pages in accordance with the DMCA. (See Google's page on DMCA compliance for more on this.)

4) If that fails, your only recourse will be to (a) live with the infringement or (b) hire a lawyer.

Other things to consider:

1) Copyright doesn't have to be registered to be valid, but registration will entitle you to statutory damages (which can be much higher than real damages) if it's done early enough.

2) It may be hard to justify the cost of suing the owner of a "hobby site" or a small-time commercial site that gets very little traffic (especially if you aren't entitled to statutory damages). Large commercial Web sites are another story. Along with other infringement victims, I'm currently suing a "Media Metrix Top 10" Web site for violations that include copyright infringement, and the collective damages (both statutory and real) could run into the millions of dollars.