Poor man's e-mail copyright

robjvargas

Rob J. Vargas
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What do you mean by this, rob? Are you saying we should all register our copyrights in order to somehow defend them?

Part of any tort in the USA involves the concept of damages, right?

If you don't take action when you know your copyright is being violated, then you start to create a situation where you don't appear to feel damaged. I know pretty surely that this is the case in trademark law. It's one of the reasons companies like Disney defend what I call the "three circles" mouse image so strenuously.

I think the same sort of idea applies in copyright. If you know someone is pirating, or plagiarizing, your work, and you don't take action, you may lose that claim to damages. I think punitive awards are still possible.

DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. IANAL. I'M NOT A LAWYER.

Check with a proper intellectual property attorney. But I think that's basically true. With a Devil/details disclaimer.
 

veinglory

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You can take action without registering copyright, you just are not going to get punitive damages in a US court.
 

Bufty

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Agreed, and from rob's response it was just as well you did ask.

I wasn't sure which one it was, Bufty, which is why I asked for confirmation. It's always good to be clear.
 

morngnstar

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Damages don't cease to exist because you seem not to notice them. There might be a statute of limitations, but that would not prevent you from taking action against a new violation of your copyright. Or you might not be able to claim 10x damages if someone publishes a copy of your work every year for ten years: there is a principle that you should take reasonable action to minimize damages against you, and the court might that by filing an action promptly you could have prevented 9x of the damages. But you could still claim 1x of the damages.
 

Justin K

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No one will steal your manuscript and pass it off as their own, not so long as baseball bats can still break legs. If you're worried about your story idea being stolen, I wouldn't worry either, everything's been done.
 

Spy_on_the_Inside

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I use the poor man's copyright too, but I use a different take. I use the U.S. Postal Service to mail it to myself, but first, I take the manuscript to the bank and have it dated by a notary, and have them sign every five or so pages, and when it arrives, I put it in my safety deposit box.

But is going for copyright still the best option? What the process for copyrighting something that's not yet published?
 

amergina

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I use the poor man's copyright too, but I use a different take. I use the U.S. Postal Service to mail it to myself, but first, I take the manuscript to the bank and have it dated by a notary, and have them sign every five or so pages, and when it arrives, I put it in my safety deposit box.

But is going for copyright still the best option? What the process for copyrighting something that's not yet published?

If you want to understand copyright and copyright registration (in the US), your best bet is to look at: FAQ: Copyright and the FAQ at the US Copyright Office: http://copyright.gov/help/faq/index.html

Your work is protected by copyright as soon as you write it. You don't need to do anything to copyright it.

You *can* register the copyright of an unpublished work, but then you have to go through the process of registering a new copyright on a derivative work if you substantially change the manuscript. This is why publishers prefer that you *don't* register a copyright before you submit for publication.
 

Old Hack

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Spy, you're wasting your money and your time doing all of that.

Everyone, please read the links that Amergina has provided and stop speculating.

If you're not able or prepared to do that, let me summarise the situation for you: poor man's copyright does not protect your rights, and there is no point indulging in any form of it.

I hope that's clear.
 

AW Admin

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You can't "lose" your copyright by not defending it, but not defending can make an infringement case requiring penalties difficult or at least expensive to prove in court, the logic being that you allowed A to infringe but not B, for instance, and thus having to convince the jury that A and B are qualitatively different.

If you don't defend your copyright the work doesn't suddenly become a public domain work, for instance.

And yes, you can lose rights to a trademark if you don't defend it.
 

robjvargas

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You can't "lose" your copyright by not defending it, but not defending can make an infringement case requiring penalties difficult or at least expensive to prove in court, the logic being that you allowed A to infringe but not B, for instance, and thus having to convince the jury that A and B are qualitatively different.

If you don't defend your copyright the work doesn't suddenly become a public domain work, for instance.

And yes, you can lose rights to a trademark if you don't defend it.
Yeah. That. :hooray:

I knew they weren't literally the same. But if you can't recover damages, that's a major loss, even if you retain legal ownership.
 

veinglory

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It's a loss to the proportion of writers who would ever be in that scenario. One I think might be statistically pretty small, and substracted from that the ones where their publisher brought the case.

On which basis, I send my DMCAs without any registration and they still work just fine. It about how you assess that risk versus benefit. In my case, about $1000 versus something I doubt will ever happen and if it did I could still use the law to make them stop.

Others might care less about the loss or worry more about the risk.
 
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