Copyrights

There are some authors still today who do not know about copyrights. A copyright is to protect your written work, music, and tear sheets or other related material. However, it does not protect your ideas or titles used for your manuscripts/books.

Believe it or not, there are some new and aspiring authors who do not protect their work before submitting it to literary agents and/or publishers. After reading and studying on copyrights, it is said that if you have an article, printed document or book, and web content distributed online is already copyrighted. There are some sites that post articles, poetry, stories, and web content using the copyright symbol © as another method to protect their content. You can either use the word, "Copyright" or the symbol "©" to protect your work.

There is a question whether or not to use the "Poor Man's Copyrights" versus sending your material to Library of Congress to be copyrighted for a fee of $45-$65 dollars. The rate has increased tremendously since 1996. At one time, it was only $25.00 to send your printed manuscript or poetry or any written work to be copyrights and even music or lyrics. Today, it is $45 dollars and able to upload it directly on the site. The last time I sent in copyrights was three years ago and was able to mail the document or put it on CD-R diskette to protect my manuscripts. As for "Poor Man's Copyrights", this is when a person uses certified mail or priority mail postage and mail the document addressed to the author or writer themselves. You are not to open the mail and keep it in a safekeeping place when a copyright infringement issues may arise. Ironically, there are some people who will still use this method. However, others believe you will not be able to uphold "Poor Man's Copyright" in the court of law. Yet, I have heard of cases where it did hold up in the court of law. Most people are playing it safe by having their material copyright legally with the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 120 million items, and where most libraries review library holdings on their site (www.loc.gov) before ordering books, audio, and even video collections.

In basic terms, copyright infringement involves when you believe someone has used your written content in their own books or music and want to claim the rights to ownership of it. You are liable to sue and take it to court to prove it is your material.

For authors and musicians, it is best to be schooled and not fooled. Overall, you should want to protect your material whether going with the "Poor Man's Copyright" or to copyright (protect) your material with the Library of Congress than to not have it protected at all.