Copyright Issues on the Web

Answer 1

For all their massive talent and creativity, many modern content creators find themselves at a loss. Because a lot of the individuals who write blogs, e-books or post online photos are totally independent, they have a lot of trouble figuring out the copyright rules that exist to help them protect their work.

Copyright law is designed to help publishers and authors ensure that others do not take their work and pass it off as their own. Naturally, there are extreme complexities that make turning the rules to your advantage pretty difficult. Fortunately, the twists and turns of modern copyright policy provide creators with quite a lot of leeway. These tips should help you master the convolutions of the code.

Learning the Ropes

Though many people simply add a copyright symbol to their blog, this does not suffice. Anyone can still steal your work. The only way you'll be able to obtain compensation is if you can unequivocally prove that you created it first, even if this proof doesn't come to light until you get to court.

Most judges, courts, juries and attorneys agree that having your info registered with the US Copyright Office is ironclad proof. Even more promising, you don't have to copyright your work right away. As long as you register a copy of your work within six months of publishing it online, your copyright will be valid.

There are plenty of ways to register your information with the copyright office. You can send hard copies of all your content by printing it out and mailing it in; this method is perfect for content like stories, blogs, music records or books. On the other hand, rich content like images, program code samples or other files are better registered via email. You can visit the Copyright Office website to create an account that lets you simply send in your information, and furthermore, this option is much cheaper. The fees for digital submission are much lower than those for hard copy submission.

Remember that copyright registration isn't the end-all of content protection. It's just the key to seeing justice served on your behalf. If you create a lot of content, you need to keep an eye out for people stealing your work, and remember to re-register your copyrights when you publish new blogs or other content.