One of the topics I have followed closely since the beginning of Web Publishing blog is for profit copyright enforcement.

Lawyers have been using copyright law enforcement for profit for years whether it was Getty Images which has been going after web site owners for years, or Perfect 10 which purchased licenses from photographers for, in my opinion, the sole purpose of suing Google.

Wired Magazine now reports a company from Nevada, RightHaven, is now going after web publishers for republishing newspaper articles on their sites. Similar to Perfect 10′s approach, RightHaven purchases rights to old newspaper articles from newspapers and then takes matters in to their own hands.

Outside of the business context I think this has a chilling effect as most newspapers alter, move, or remove articles from the web over time. For a small website owner when faced with spending a few thousand dollars to make something go away or tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees there is only one easy way out.

How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and $75,000 or more was missing from your business bank account?

“When consumers lose money due to cyber fraud, retail banks are required by law to refund the money — provided the victim doesn’t wait too long in reporting the unauthorized charges. Commercial banks, however, are under no such obligation, although they usually will work with the victim customer to try to reverse as many of the fraudulent transfers as possible.” — Via Krebs On Security.

So, what can you do about it?

#1 Exclusively do your internet banking on a locked down machine, preferably running off of a recent Linux boot disk. Download Ubuntu, burn it to a CD, and boot from that.

#2 Get a Cybersecurity insurance policy.

#3 Stay the fuck away from small community banks. From what I’ve seen the big boys generally have more robust security policies (which still may not help if you or your secretary’s computer is full of trojans.)