Copyright Information

Copyright agents

Copyright agents
The first time this term came up, visions of BSA - Business Software Alliance - Agents hunting down pirates in a Matrix like circumstances flashed through my head. But nowadays, a copyright agent seems to be a real working person. The interesting and intriguing name must have a clear definition behind it, and although it might ruin the romantic idea of cyber agents, let us find out what a copyright agent actually is and what he does. The first explanation is delivered by the internet portal Yahoo, which employs many copyright agents. The statement introducing the agent precedes a declaration by the portal that they respect the copyright and the intellectual property laws and rights of creators, therefore they employ a copyright agent to handle all inquiries and complaints regarding possible copyright infringement situations which take place on any of Yahoo’s servers. When digging a little deeper, any and all portals, providers of internet images and templates, internet image and photo agencies, actually providers of any downloads, have a page where direct contact to the copyright agent is provided, per mail, phone and e-mail, where an individual whose copyrighted work has been infringed upon and is hosted on their website, or servers, can state his or her claim and ask for assistance and removal of the material. According to these sources, a copyright agent is apparently a specialist who handles copyright issues related to the website or portal he is employed by. But it seems that the computer giant Apple went a step further. They had their copyright agent send frivolous copyright complaints against anybody who tried to implement or wrote about anything even remotely related to Apple and the associated technology. This agent wrote to the developers of the VideoLAN media player, because they implemented the capability to playback MPEG-4 AAC files into the free VLC player. Nevertheless, a copyright agent is still a person, perhaps a paralegal, who has been designated by a company or web presence to receive and handle all notification and incoming notices regarding claimed and real copyright infringement occurrences on the website, portal, server or any other internet address he is in charge of, taking the duty previously handled by site and server administrators. This provision is apparently a requirement, or moreover the result of a requirement, implemented into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA for short, which requires a service provider to handle any such copyright claim with diligence and efficiency. Many pages where the copyright agent contact is listed have an exact description of the material required to verify the claim.

Media And Copyright

computer copyright issues