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To protect your work using the copyright laws, you must sue violators and prove they infringed your exclusive rights. You may also report online violations by members of a service provider company and demand the service provider remove or disable the infringing work. Under some circumstances you may also report a criminal violation of your copyright and the FBI will investigate.

The U.S. copyright law automatically protects any original work of yours that is a written, video (movie, documentary, etc.), musical or art form from being used without your permission. A copyright is the set of exclusive rights you receive from the federal government to publish, copy, adapt, display or perform your original work, which is good from the time you create it until 70 years after your death. The work must be entirely your own creation, though, in order to qualify.

But, if your work was created as a paid employee, or if you were paid by commission to create the work, the employer owns the copyright, unless you both agreed otherwise before the work was created.

In fact, only certain limited categories of commissioned works fall under this rule and initial (author's) copyright of everything else is owned by the person creating the works, regardless of what any agreement purports. The duration of copyright on works made for hire (as an employee or otherwise) is 95 years from first publication, if any, or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.

In order for your creation to be copyright protected, it must be concrete, as in written form, film, audio, computer memory, etc. Once it's written, filmed, etc., you don't have to publicly sell or distribute the work. It is yours to do with as you please, but if you do plan to sell or distribute the work, it should include a copyright notice, as a warning to others. To operate as an effective notice this must be the word "Copyright", the symbol for copyright, or the abbreviation of the word Copyright ("Copr."), the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. Notice should be placed where easily visible on the work, if not also digitally embedded. Removal or tampering with a copyright notice is also a violation of copyright law.

It's not necessary to register a copyright, but it is advisable to do so, which can be done for a small charge. Registration give the copyright owner access to the US federal courts as well as possible claims for "statutory damages".

You can obtain a copyright registration application by calling the Copyright Forms Hotline at 202-707-9100, or write to Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20559, or use the online forms at copyright.gov

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