Copyright Law Blog

Writing script treatment for your movie idea

July 30th, 2009 at 06:41pm Under intellectual property

There are reasons for writing a treatment or outline based on your brilliant original movie idea. Simply put a movie idea or concept cannot be copyrighted. Idea theft isn’t widespread in the movie business, but there is always that remote possibility some intellectual property thief hears your movie idea, loves it, and develops their own script or movie based on your idea. Not many aspiring writers, directors, or producers have deep enough pockets to get into a costly court battle over an idea. Writing a treatment and submitting it to the U.S. Copyright Office protects your movie idea. It is possible to sell a script treatment, but usually that’s reserved for Hollywood insiders or established screenwriters with a proven track record. Not for newcomers on the scene. Hashing out solid a script treatment greatly increases the chances for a tight well written script to be born. This article is mainly for those aspiring screenwriters that have a movie idea they are going to eventually write themselves. A treatment is a full narrative description of the story. This happens, this happens, and finally this happens. It can include bits of dialogue or not. Length can vary from 1-25 pages or more depending how involved you want to get. I’m usually able to get a real good handle on my script idea within 6 pages of a treatment.I myself do not write out scenes on index cards to follow as a road map for my scripts. I heard it works for other screenwriters, but I can’t share with you a technique I personally do not use. I also do not write detailed biographies on characters to get into their heads. If I created them I better know what motivates them and what makes them say or do the things they do in the script.  I use a simple script treatment to flesh out my movie idea into a tight story. Writing a shorter treatment is my personal preference. People develop their own preferences when writing a treatment. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll find yours as you go through the process.  At this point, if you’ve done a little reading on screenwriting you’ll be looking at your treatment to make sure it follows the Three Act Structure as advised in many books. The First Act (the beginning), the Second Act (the middle), and the Third Act (the end). I respect the principal, but do not apply it as a hard and fast rule to my scripts. All good stories will always have a beginning that hooks people, a middle that keeps people interested in how the whole thing will turn out, and the end where you give the viewer the big payoff.   When you write a script trying to force your idea to conform to the Three Act Structure your story can lose zip. It might be your story has four or five acts to get to the end. When I look at my treatment I ask myself one major question; would I watch this movie? Movies, in my opinion, are for entertainment. If you tell a good story that will keep people entertained and watching you’ll do fine as a filmmaker. With a treatment done I always feel more confident going in to write a full script. Think of a treatment as your road map of where you want the story you script to lead. When you’re done with your treatment you’re one step closer to making your movie, not just talking about it. Good writing!Hopefully you found this article useful. Learn more about making movies by picking up The First Movie is the Toughest is packed with no nonsense advice, help, and entertaining stories about making movies outside of Hollywood on limited budgets. This book is for aspiring Screenwriters, Directors, and Producers along with the casual movie viewer with their own great story idea for a movie. No hype. No bull.

Click Here and Find Out How to Shut Down Article Plagiarism

July 25th, 2009 at 12:35pm Under copyright act

Writing informational articles for the Web is a good way to establish oneself as an authority on any topic. Creating articles is also very effective in generating traffic for your website. However, deceitful authors can plagiarize your work (with very little effort). Read on for advice and tips to cope with copyright violations.

A few lazy individuals have plagiarized a number of my articles for their blogs and websites. These sloths deliberately copied my hard work, verbatim, without my biography and Internet links. So far, dishonest webmasters with Google adSense blogs or directories have committed all violations.

I decided to nose around until I pinpointed contact information for the violators. However, these troublemakers are usually adept at concealing e-mail addresses and configuring blogs so that nobody is able to post comments.

As a result, I contacted Google. Google has zero tolerance for copyright infringements. Such violations reflect poorly on their corporate image, and they respond rapidly to legitimate complaints. Performing a search for: ‘digital millennium copyright act google.com’ will locate a page with full instructions and company contact information. The page also displays links to appropriate websites with more particulars about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

My next step was to contact the hosting company for each of the violators. It is often difficult to unearth a valid e-mail address. You can try generic addresses like abuse@’hostingwebsite’, info@’hostingwebsite’, webmaster@’hostingwebsite’, etc. You may have to visit the webhost online and complete a support request. Alternatively, you may need to spend some time on the telephone.

My final action was to type out a document similar to the one below. I then faxed it to Google and the hosting companies, while I continued to monitor the violating websites. In some cases, pirated content would disappear for a few days, and then the bootlegged articles would reappear.— BEGIN SAMPLE COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DOCUMENT —

All of the articles on the following pages are a violation of my intellectual copyright and the copyright of the article directory from which they were copied:

(Link to first web page)

(Link to second web page)

(Link to third web page), etc.

The articles were copied from here:

(Link to author summary webpage at article directory from which articles were plagiarized)

The copied text blatantly violates the publisher’s terms of service, clearly linked to on the above page:

(Link to the article directory’s terms of service page)

Every article is a direct copy and paste of my work from the above article directory, without the applicable copyright notice and links to my site or to the article directory, as required in their terms of service.

I hereby avow, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner.

Type your name here.

Sign here.— END SAMPLE COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DOCUMENT —

You may have to change the wording of the document to match whatever is appropriate for your situation. It is important to provide complete contact information: your postal/email addresses and fax/cell/telephone numbers.

Remember to include a copyright notice with each of your articles, similar to the one below. Let’s all work together to transform the Net into an honest environment; let’s clear out the vermin who prey on the intellectual property of others.

(c)Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author’s note below (with active links) are included.

How Do You Protect Writing Put On A Website Against Copyright Infringement?

July 9th, 2009 at 04:28am Under website copyright

I want to protect some of the original writing on my website & was wondering how to do this…
a)Can I put the Copyright notation on it without revealing my real name?
b)How do I have proof that it is my original work? How about saving the writing in MS Word?
c)Is there any point in filing for a copyright on the writings/website?