A Newsletter by SAM about using your website.

SAM

Protecting Your Intellectual Web Property July 2009

1. All Rights Reserved

2009-07-14 17:19:52

Using someone else’s written work without giving them credit is called plagiarism. It is looked down upon to plagiarize anything and you can potentially get into some trouble by doing it. However, it becomes more then just frowned upon when you take someone’s words that were written or keyed in on a website, because it has been officially documented once it’s on a site. Once documented, it is easy to prove who wrote it first. The person who wrote it second can easily be accused of copying and can be discredited as a reliable source of information.
Depending on how important the words are and what it costs the author determines if a lawsuit is needed. Often to protect writings on websites, you see the term “All Rights Reserved,” and Copyright at the bottom of the page.

There is a legal procedure to file a copyright on content. The effort can be very time consuming and most put it at the bottom of their content with the assumption that the user understands, they do not want someone using their work.

The Internet has its own way of dealing with situations relating to plagiarism. If you create a website and put your own words on it and a competitor comes along and decides to copy your website word-for-word the search engines have a way of dealing with this. Any form of writing that contains the exact same content as another website does not get recognized by the search engines. It sets up a shield for the original written site. Be aware that this can also work against the original author as well. If the author wants to use his/her work on another one of his/her sites then he/she will be penalized as well. I suggest you post your work on your own site first and use your other websites as a networking tool by linking them to your first website that contains all of your written content.



2. Protecting Your Domain

2009-07-28 15:16:47

Contrary to popular belief, domain names on the World Wide Web are not owned, instead they are registered. If you let time lapse and do not pay the fee to keep it under your name you will lose a domain. Buyers are often quick to scoop up a domain that lapses, especially when it has been on the Internet for a while and search engines recognize it.

The most important part of registration of a domain name, besides your name, is the email address. If you decide to change your email address make sure to do it in the domain account. Most registrars will warn you when the your domain name is coming up on expiration. This is done with the email address you have saved under the domain name. If you have not updated the email address in your account, you may not get your notice. The domain can go to auction and be sold right from under you.

Another reason to keep your domain updated is when you make changes to your domain like pointing it to another host, the change is verified through your email address. If you do not have the correct email address in your account, you will not get the notice and the change may not happen.



Some good rules to follow when registering a domain name:
1. Register your domain in your company name.
2. Make sure you are the administrator.
3. Keep track of where you registered it.
4. Keep the account information.
5. Keep the email address in it current.
6. When purchasing a company that has a website, make sure the domain is put into your name and email address.



3. Spam Attack from Website Forms

2009-07-31 15:06:09

When you attach your email to a form on a website, you are opening that email to an attack by a robot spammer. One way to control this is to put a captcha on the form. We use one that makes you add two numbers. Go to our contact form if you want to see how. When a spammer finds an open form, he sends his robots. That is when you are bombarded by hundreds of emails from the form. Using a captcha stops the robots. Word captchas are more common. That is when you are asked to repeat the letters and numbers in an image. Most robots can’t read text in images, but some can. For that reason we require the user add numbers that are generated randomly.


We also recommend using an email address attached to your website
forms that is used only for that purpose. At some point you can always change the email address. Forms do not show the email address attached to it, so you can use any email address. Always test forms when they are changed to make sure you are still getting the emails.