So yesterday’s situation serves as a good refresher on the concept of a “derivative work”. In the United States, federal copyright law defines a derivative work as follows:

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.

The law goes on to say this in Section 106:

… the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights … to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work

This is US law, of course, and not all countries have such an explicit definition. Canada currently does not, for example, though the copyright legislation does list similar rights as examples of what the copyright owner can do.

The point here is to be very careful when creating something based on someone else’s work. As I discussed before in my Private Label Rights Pitfalls article, just because something is labelled as “PLR” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is PLR.

The easiest way to avoid copyright problems is to write everything yourself from scratch. Use other material as research, sure, but make sure you’re not just rewriting someone else’s content so that it falls under the “derivative work” rule… As ad AdSense publisher, you’ll probably find that you have better results from natural organic search traffic with completely original content anyhow.

Do me a favor and read my review of Google Nemesis. Then read this other one and tell me what you think.

What’s that saying about flattery again?

Update: I’ve decided to give Bjorn the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially now that he’s linked back to my review as a reference for his own.

There’s a lot of crap for sale on ClickBank. There are also some good things available. Personally, as a software/ebook seller I like to use ClickBank because they handle all the tax collection issues (this is going to become a big issue for people selling things directly via PayPal in the next few years, trust me) and they pay regularly and consistently.

But I also like to use ClickBank as an individual buyer because they make it easy to get a refund. So if something I buy isn’t up to snuff for whatever reason (see my recent Google Nemesis review) I can get a full refund within 8 weeks of the purchase, no questions asked.

There are two ways to get a refund. The simplest is to simply take the electronic receipt ClickBank mailed you after the purchase and forward it to refunds@clickbank.com along with a brief message asking for a refund and why you want the refund.

The second way is to go to the ClickBank purchase questions page and select the “I would like to request a refund” subject. You’ll have to fill in the purchase details (obtained from the aforementioned receipt) and give an explanation. (Since you need the receipt to do this, it’s just simpler to mail a copy off IMHO…)

In either case, you’ll get a refund within two or three business days. It’s really that simple.

BTW, refund requests shouldn’t be knee-jerk reactions. If you’re having a problem with the product, contact the vendor first and see if they can fix it. Refunds should be a last resort. Sellers get notified when refunds occur and can see the reason why a refund was requested… there’s nothing worse than getting a “the product never worked” reason when you could have fixed it easily enough if the buyer had contacted you first.

Out of all the ClickBank products I’ve purchased, I think I’ve only asked for refunds on two of them.