Protecting Your Copyright Online

The Internet has made publishing works of fiction, non-fiction, artwork, poetry and other creative endeavors exponentially easier that it has ever been. The problem that this creates is that it has also become exponentially easier to steal the work of others. Finding a story you have slaved over for hours on a website with someone else's byline is, for a writer, equivalent to having their child kidnapped.

Under the Copyright Act of 1979, a work is copyrighted as soon as it is in "fixed" form. What this means is that as soon as the story hits the paper or the paint hits the canvas, the work is copyrighted and that copyright is recognized by International Copyright Law. But for someone determined to not do their own work, that is usually not enough to protect the creator.

So, how do you, as a writer or musician or artist protect your rights and property? There are a couple of avenues that you can take, all of which are legitimate, it just depends on how much you want to spend on the process.

There are several websites that provide copyright registration services. These can range from $30 to $150, depending on the services that you request and the amount of protection you are looking for. The $30 fee will get your work registered with the Copyright Office and protects you in the event that someone does plagiarize your work, which is really all that you need.

There is another way you can prove that your work is your own without going through the registration process. Begin by adding the standard copyright notice (© 2006 Your Name. All Rights Reserved.) at the end of your work. The notice is not required and can be altered (a c within parenthesis (c) in place of the ©, the word Copyright or the abbreviation Copr. are also acceptable, and "All Rights Reserved" is no longer required in the United States) but it does help to cover all the bases and notify all who come into contact with your work that it was created by you in 2006.

As you finish a draft of the work, date it and print a copy. When you are satisfied with the work and are ready to call it finished, print a copy with the date on the first page and have it notarized. This will generally cost you a few dollars and is something you can have done in several locations, including most post offices, banks, legal offices, or your local courthouse, as well as some real estate offices and mortgage companies. Place the notarized final copy and all previous, dated, drafts in a legal sized envelope and send it to yourself via certified mail. Don't open the envelope until you have to (hopefully you won't ever open it).

Later, if you find that someone has placed their name on your work, you can use this notarized and certified copy of your work to take legal action against the person. It is at this point you, or more likely a judge, will open the envelope and compare the drafts and dates on your material to the material that the plagiarist presents in their own defense. Providing you never have to find your way into a courtroom, this process, start to finish, will cost you around $10, depending on the length of your work (longer work, more paper, heavier package, more postage required).

With the almost mutant growth in Internet publishing opportunities, protecting one's creative property is becoming a bigger concern for many authors and artists. Even though a work receives legitimate and recognized copyright as soon as it becomes "fixed," there is, as of yet, no way of policing the Internet to ensure that nothing that appears within that arena has been plagiarized.