After spending sweat and effort, you and your writers, editors, videographers, graphic designers, photographers and other staff members finally see your works posted on your business website. What if the next day, you these very same contents unlawfully posted on another website? This has happened on occasion and can happen again. It cemented the need for online moderation and for online content protection. Businesses saw the need for online moderation services as a means of checking, supervision and monitoring of web contents to make sure that these are secured from “content pirates”.
Online contents that need to be secured include original audio, movies, and publications in scanned format, games, private polls and all other forms of media. Copyright policies were created by authorities to protect people who made/own these materials. In all countries, piracy and plagiarism are considered illegal, though enforcement varies based on location. In social networking sites like Youtube, piracy is rampant. Users use video capturing tools to record an existing video, then they upload it as their own. Due to this activity, some media owners block their videos in countries where works are not well protected. Books are also protected by law as proven when Google faced controversies when it launched its service to digitalize books that are out of print (e-books). This issue was settled through an agreement of revenue sharing from the author of the book and the internet company.
In online moderation, contents of a business website are monitored. Moderators check if the articles are original and are not violating any law on copyright. Moderators make sure the segments of viral videos are not taken from other productions or websites. After they posted web materials on the business website, they supervise the activities of the site so that no one can just copy the video and use it for illegal purposes. They set guidelines to protect the content of the website. Indeed, moderators become the policemen of the internet. By using computer software, they program whether an article can be copied by a user or not. Some websites do not allow copy-and-paste function while some websites automatically shows the source of an article or a video when copied. With pictures, some place the business logo at the bottom of the picture. Others program the picture so that it will not be shown unless the user registers as a member of the website. Moderators also monitor the worldwide web for violators. If they find one, they report the incident to the business for further action. Moderators remind users of the website laws on piracy and copyright for content security.
Nowadays, there are “rework” articles. Some writers make a version of their work from an original article. In some instances, moderators inquire about the suspicious article from the website it was posted. Some websites delete the article to stop further troubles while some choose to explain their defense in court. In moderation, it is difficult to identify if the article is plagiarized or not. Moderators take time comparing similar works before further actions.
While there are laws that protect works from being abused by other websites and other people, these are not sufficient for your content security. These laws just give the consequence to violators. The best thing to do is still to implement excellent online moderation system to your business website. For more information, visit us at www.newmediaservices.com.au or email us at info@newmediaservices.com.au.
