PLR copyright infringement concerns...

becasue using only one source can be seen as plagarism. plr is meant to cut down research and thinking time.

Not to my knowledge; yet.

The small business arena of the Internet doesn't seem to be that closely monitored, however. If you pay attention, you can see a LOT of things that go on which are pretty "suspect"; for all intents and purposes. Yet, mostly out of ignorance of the law more so than out of malicious intent.

- Membership sites without a TOS
- Earnings claims without a disclaimer
- Products without a refund policy
- and others

HTH
PLP,
tecHead

If that's the case, why aren't they called RA (Research Articles) or something similar?

They're called PLR, Private Label Rights, articles. I believe it was another Warrior who described it as something like a store brand--someone else makes the product, but the store puts their own label on it. Same contents, the only difference is the brand name.

But, if PLR is just another resource, that's just like taking a bunch of cans of vegetables you bought for your store brand, but then opening them up, mixing them together, re-canning and selling them as mixed vegetables under your store brand. In which case, what was the point of buying those re-brandable cans of vegetables? You could have just bought the vegetables fresh or grown them yourself and then canned them. After all, you're still doing the canning anyway.

If you just want ideas, why pay for PLR just for ideas when you can browse the Internet and get tons of ideas for free? And, as others have mentioned, depending on PLR for research is a bit spotty anyway.

As for the original question, I don't have an answer for that. I would think it would be a wise idea to keep track of where you purchased each PLR article or eBook you use. I would think that the fact that you paid for PLR rather than simply scraping content from other websites would be a point in your favor, and perhaps show that copyright infringement was not your intent. By purchasing Private Label Rights that would seem to be indicative of a desire to use content with permission. You'd be a victim as well as the person whose work was infringed upon. At the very least, maybe it would help in negotiating a friendly settlement, especially if you can help them track down the original infringer.

It does not.

If you make a copy and distribute it you are infringing.

And ignorance is also not a defensible position in copyright cases.

Selling copyrighted work is infringing. Giving away copyrighted work is infringing. Publishing copyrighted work on the web is infringing.

The penalties can be huge, hundreds of thousands of dollars and defense of a copyright suit is very expensive as well even if you are innocent.

As I pointed out earlier in this thread this goes for resale rights and master resale rights products too and you cannot trust anyone even the biggest names in IM to properly perform due diligence...

You must ask you must demand verification in writing. If you do not get it and you are unsure do not use the material.

You'd still be distributing the products. If any of the PLR is actually copyrighted material, you're still infringing upon copyright by distributing it. Locking it behind a membership site and saying you're just selling a membership doesn't change the fact that you are still distributing the material.

That may protect your buyers from suing you in the event that you distribute copyrighted material to them, but that's not going to prevent the copyright holder from suing you.

That is correct according to my understanding as well.

That's true. The copyright holder, if there is one, can sue you even if the seller told you that you have the right to use it, even if the seller included a license detailing what you can do with the material. So, you're still stuck.

You can try to turn around and sue the seller, though that may be made difficult by their own terms of use. I checked one site, for example, and they assured their buyers that their work was original, but they wouldn't accept any responsibility for it if someone claimed infringement. You were on your own, and, by buying from them, you were agreeing to those terms. So, you can't rely on the idea that you can just turn around and sue the seller for selling you copyrighted material. Besides, the copyright holder will be probably suing them as well, and their claims may take precedence over yours.

That's a good question. The reason people want PLR is partially to avoid any copyright problems. I mean, you want inexpensive articles that you can take and do pretty much whatever you want with them, without worrying about anyone's copyright.

And, it's not like PLR buyers are doing the virtual equivalent of buying car parts off the back of a truck by a guy assuring them that, no, they're not stolen. Just because the PLR content may be a low price doesn't mean it's stolen content. PLR writers have good reason to write and sell PLR. If you write 10 articles, at today's rates that might get a writer $50-$100. If they're lucky, maybe they'll get as much as $250, or more. But, if they sell a 10-article pack as PLR for $10, if they get 100 buyers, that's $1,000. Even if they get 50 buyers, that's $500. So, there's a good chance (depending on the niche and so forth) that they could make more selling articles as PLR than simply doing articles just for one buyer.

Of course, those prices and sales numbers and so on can all vary, but the point is that PLR isn't necessarily something shady and questionable. There are valid reasons for writers to write and sell PLR, so there's good reason for a buyer not to expect that PLR is all stolen content.

So, there's a lot of PLR that's out there that is probably safe to use. But, that's not the PLR that's going to be a problem for you. Someone may sell you PLR content and say that they wrote it and it was all original content, and they may be telling you the truth. Someone else might grab some articles from an article directory, spin them and tell you the same thing. How do you know who is telling you the truth and who is not?

A PLR vendor may tell you, yes, you can do whatever you want with their PLR articles. They may have been told the same thing by the person who sold them the content, who may have been told the same thing by the person who sold them the content, and so on all the way back to the original seller. And, who knows if that original seller created the content or stole it? And, by the time it reaches you, you don't even know the original source of the material, which makes it difficult to do any research on it.

The bottom line is that you are responsible for what you publish and you are the one that will be held responsible for what you publish. Even if you're "just" running a website or selling an eBook, you're still a publisher. Do you think a big name publisher would publish content that they weren't sure of the source of that content or weren't absolutely certain of the rights they have to the content? They may have teams of lawyers working for them, but I doubt they'd take the chance on material they weren't sure of.

And changing a few words here and there may not be sufficient, and probably won't be, to avoid a copyright infringement suit.

Of course, you'll only have a problem if the material you're using was copyrighted material that wasn't authorized to be used as PLR by the copyright holder.

Insurance may help, but that's generally designed to protect your own original work or works to which you have secured the rights. Using PLR, especially PLR that does not come directly from the author (where you might be able to have them sign documentation that may be suggested by the insurance company), might be considered as risky behavior and result in more expensive insurance expenses than what you might incur by just using your own original material and/or material to which you have clearly secured the rights.

That you represent and warrant that you are the sole owner of all rights in and hold the undivided copyright interest in the articles you offer as private label rights articles. That the articles offered are original work and that you have the sole and exclusive right to grant the private label rights and related rights to the work. That you will solely be held responsible should the articles infringe upon any copyright or any other right that leads to any civil or legal cause of action of any nature regarding the articles and that you agree to indemnify the buyer regarding any civil claim or legal nature of any type regarding any infringement of rights originated by the articles.

Tony,
the way to legally show you're the owner is to display to folks who license your material the bar code you receive from the US copyright office. You can now electronically register your material for 35$ US. Amazes me folks will spend that or more on an ecover for their material, but wont spend the money to protect their material (or show others its legit).
Check out:
U.S. Copyright Office - Online Services (eCO: Electronic Copyright Office)

good luck,
--Jack