Copyrights and Such

#1 Essentially anything that you create is yours and you have a moral and legal copyright over any work that you do unless you sign it away.

The easiest way to establish a somewhat valid copyright on something that you have done is to take a copy of your work, seal it in an envelope, and send it through registered mail to yourself. It will come back to you with a government stamp (from the postal service) which authenticates the date of the contents inside (just as long as you do not open it).

Logan

#2 Copyrights don't cost anything, you are automatically the copyright holder of anything copyrightable that you create. It's been that way for a long time in europe, and the US dropped the registration requirements sometime in the 2nd half this century, don't know the year.

It helps with enforcement if you put a copyright notice on your work. The format is © (the (C) is usually accepted as a replacement) + year + copyright holder, e.g. "(C)2002 by Nowhere Productions".

I don't know if you can still register copyrights somewhere. Maybe the US still has a copyright office that takes registrations.

#3 The proper place to register copyrights in the US is with the library of congress.

Logan, I hope you haven't been using that mail yourself as proof of creation technique. It's been defeated in court practically every time it's brought up since the post office is perfectly willing to let you mail an empty, unsealed package to yourself. You can then seal it with something inside at a later date.

The proper way to do this is to 1) register with the library of congress, which is fairly cheap and fairly easy, or 2) seal a copy in an envelope in front of a notary public, and have him/her place their seal across the back of your envelope, in such a way that the seal will be disturbed if the envelope is steamed open.

#4 Yeah I heard about the mailing thing, but I heard it doesnt work anymore. I also heard when you put something like that on a personal website it becomes copyrighted. Does that still hold true or is it just like the envelope thing in the mail? Thanks

Cory L. Mangle

#5 Cory, everything is copywritten as soon as you write it, regardless of you posting it anywhere or not.

If the copyright owner comes into question, though, you have to prove that you wrote it first. Putting up a webpage isn't a good way to prove the date you first wrote it. Having a copy notarized or registered at the library of congress does that for you.

#6 Ok cool. thank you guys for all your help. As you can tell I am "noob" but I can tell I am going to love it here take care you guys.


Cory Mangle