In a recent podcast with internet marketer, Lance Tamashiro, Revision Legal partner Eric Misterovich discuss how to protect your business in an online world:
Listen to the podcast: Protecting Your Content, Copyright, DMCA & Defamation – Eric Misterovich
More about Lance Tamashiro:
“Before hearing about internet marketing, I was an IT computer nerd for most of the 2000’s. In Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, I worked as a “Database Administrator” which is the nerdiest of the nerd programming types.
During that time, I got married and had a daughter. One day, while sitting in my office, I realized things needed to change. I looked around the internet and discovered people were making money online, actually helping other people and bringing value to the lives of others. I tried every “push button technique” that doesn’t work: I created a blog, added AdSense, and flipped websites.
Luckily I found a mentor who told me I needed to build a list, so I built a list of 6000 subscribers in two months. Then I realized that “cut and paste” affiliate marketing did not generate enough income. So, I created and marketed products about how I built my list, how I automated sales, and used myself as a case study the entire way.
Success Leaves Traces, and if you too want to succeed, then you should apply those exact strategies in your own business. Additionally, you need a mastermind that understands your excitement when you make progress, has members with different skill sets to learn from, and help you to make consistent progress.
My business partner Robert Plank and I now operate a million dollar business where we market training courses (Membership Cube, Webinar Crusher, and Double Agent Marketing) and sell software (WordPress Drip, Webinar Optin, and Backup Creator).”
The topics Eric Misterovich covered in this podcast represent the core legal infrastructure every online business — whether a content creator, software developer, digital marketer, or e-commerce operator — needs to have in place. Here is a deeper look at each area.
Copyright in an original work — a blog post, a course module, a software program, a graphic — arises automatically at the moment of creation and fixation in a tangible medium. 17 U.S.C. § 102. You do not need to register with the Copyright Office to own your copyright. However, registration is a prerequisite to filing an infringement lawsuit for U.S. works (17 U.S.C. § 411), and only works registered before infringement or within three months of first publication qualify for statutory damages up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement and attorney’s fees. For online businesses whose core assets are digital content, proactive copyright registration is one of the highest-ROI legal investments available.
When someone copies your content without permission and posts it online, the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedure (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)) provides a fast, low-cost remedy. A properly formatted DMCA takedown notice sent to the hosting provider’s designated agent obligates the provider to remove the infringing content expeditiously or risk losing its safe harbor protection. The notice must include: identification of the copyrighted work; identification of the infringing material with sufficient specificity; your contact information; a statement of good faith belief that the use is unauthorized; a statement of accuracy under penalty of perjury; and your signature. Defective notices may not trigger the safe harbor notice obligation — a common problem with template letters.
When you hire a freelancer to create something for your business, copyright in that work does not automatically belong to you. Under 17 U.S.C. § 101, a work is made for hire only if it is created by an employee within the scope of employment, or if it falls into one of nine enumerated categories of specially commissioned works and the parties sign a written agreement designating it as work for hire. If neither condition is met, the freelancer owns the copyright and you have only a license. Every outsourcing arrangement should include a written work-for-hire agreement — or an express copyright assignment — before work begins.
False reviews posted by competitors, disgruntled former employees, or other bad actors can cause serious reputational and economic harm. The digital nature of the defamation — which persists indefinitely in search results and on review platforms — compounds the injury. Businesses have several tools available: DMCA takedowns when the false content is also copyright-infringing, defamation lawsuits with John Doe subpoenas to identify anonymous posters, and direct demands to platforms under their terms of service. Before pursuing any of these routes, document all evidence of the false content with screenshots and timestamps.
An enforceable terms of service agreement does more than define acceptable user behavior. It can include mandatory arbitration clauses that keep disputes out of court, limitation of liability provisions that cap your exposure, intellectual property ownership provisions that ensure user-submitted content is properly licensed to you, and governing law and venue clauses that allow you to designate a favorable forum for disputes. Disclaimers — whether for income claims in a digital marketing context, professional advice on a content site, or product performance in an e-commerce setting — must be conspicuous, plain-language, and tailored to the specific claims your marketing makes in order to be effective defenses against FTC enforcement or consumer litigation.
If you want to protect your online business with proper copyright registrations, work-for-hire agreements, or a custom terms of service and disclaimer package, Revision Legal’s internet attorneys can help. Contact us through the form on this page or call 855-473-8474.
Many online business owners treat legal compliance as something to address after they have achieved revenue scale — a mistake that can prove costly. The legal issues discussed in this podcast — copyright ownership, work-for-hire agreements, terms of service, DMCA compliance — are far easier and less expensive to address before problems arise than after. A freelancer who develops your core software platform without a work-for-hire agreement does not become less of a problem when your business is larger; they become more of one. A terms of service agreement that does not include an arbitration clause does not limit your class action exposure when you have a small customer base; it simply means the problem is smaller. The legal infrastructure of an online business is like physical infrastructure: it is easiest and cheapest to build it correctly at the foundation stage, and progressively more disruptive and expensive to retrofit it later. Revision Legal regularly counsels online businesses at every stage of growth, from pre-launch legal setup through complex multi-party disputes. If you want to build your business on a sound legal foundation, contact us through the form on this page or call 855-473-8474.
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