This essay is prompted by an event that happened a few days ago. A fellow participant on a writers' e-mail list posted an interesting article to the list. (I'm not going to identify the list or the article. It's not important to the essay.) The article was well-written and informative, and certainly appropriate to the mailing list. So the article was mailed to the dozens, or maybe hundreds, of list members. So far so good.
The problem is, I recognised the article. It was published here on Themestream. Not by the person who posted it to the mailing list. Not only was the message sender breaking copyright, he was denying the author a source of income. I pointed this out to the list, and hopefully a few people on the list will visit the original article on Themestream so that the author is properly compensated for them reading it.
But the incident got me thinking. This was a mailing list for writers (or aspiring writers). If these people don't care about copyright issues, what chance have we got with the rest of the world? I have seen people refer to the Web as a copyright "grey area". As if they believe that Web publications are somehow exempt from copyright because they don't exist in physical (i.e. paper) form. They aren't. Copyright law is well established, well understood, black and white, and applies equally to paper and electronic publications, as I will show in this essay.
I am not a legal expert. While I believe the details I present here to be correct, I suggest you look into the matter yourself or consult an expert in copyright law if you are ever unsure of your rights as a writer. Also, legal details will vary from country to country. Copyright treaties are international, but not all countries subscribe to the same treaties.
Copyright issues are addressed by a host of laws and treaties. The two international treaties that I used as reference for this essay are:
Your own country will also have relevant laws – but, hey, I can't look up everything for you!
Follow these two simple steps to legally copyright your writing:
Yes, you read that correctly. Do nothing. Your writing is automatically protected under international copyright law as soon as you write it. You are not legally required to do anything else. The law states (paraphrased):
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form so that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
Your thoughts cannot be copyrighted, but as soon as those thoughts are written down, or "Fixed in tangible form", the written work is legally protected. Is a Web page "tangible"? Some people may argue that it isn't, but it is undeniably "perceptible [...] with the aid of a machine or device." (You're perceiving this right now with the aid of a machine aren't you?)
So the instant you create a Web page, it is protected under copyright law. It doesn't matter what computer or server it resides on. You wrote it. It exists. Therefore it is © You.
You can register your copyright with a government office. In the United Kingdom, although there is no formal registration system, you can send a copy of your work to the Registry of Copyright at Stationers' Hall. In the United States, you can register work with the United States Copyright Office (http://www.loc.gov/copyright/). Registering your copyright provides you with dated proof that you wrote the work in question. This proof can be useful should you need to take legal action against a copyright violation.
Note that I said "You can register". There is no legal requirement that you must register your work. Your work is protected regardless of whether the Copyright Office has it on file. If you need legal proof of the date of creation, you could just as easily deposit a sealed and dated copy in a bank vault.
It is customary to add a copyright notice to any published work. This tells the reader who holds the copyright and when that copyright was established.
This is not a legal requirement of the copyright process. The notice is a convenience for your reader. That is all. Your work is copyrighted whether or not it carries a copyright notice.
The correct form of a copyright notice, as defined by the Berne Convention, is as follows:
© 2000 by David Meadows
Some computer systems (and most typewriters) won't allow you to use the © symbol. In this case, people sometimes use:
( c ) 2000 by David Meadows
Don't do this. Under the Berne Convention, ( c ) is a meaningless symbol. If you can't type the © symbol, use the word Copyright or the abbreviation Copr. instead. The © is preferred, however, as it also satisfies the requirements of the Universal Copyright Convention. (Some publishers use the word Copyright and the symbol © together. This is not necessary.) You can also add the phrase "All rights reserved", to ensure protection under the Buenos Aires Convention (to which most Latin American countries, as well as the United States, belong).
So, a full copyright notice would be:
© 2000 by David Meadows. All rights reserved.
This would seem to cover all the bases (as you say in America). But please remember that none of this is actually required to protect your work.
Your work is protected. Whether it's on the Web or in a book, it's protected. Of course, that won't stop crooks from copying it. But neither can you easily stop determined crooks from breaking into your house.
That's right. I said crooks. Criminals. Law breakers. Copying another person's work without permission is legally wrong and morally wrong. It's just as wrong as stealing a wallet. I know it's easy to do, especially on the Web, but that doesn't make it right.
There's a lot more to cover. Public domain. Fair use. Transfer of copyright. Something called copyleft. I'll try to cover some of it in a future essay (if anyone's interested).
Most on-line copyright resources seem to concentrate on American law. (Well, there's a surprise.) But, assuming that most of my audience is also American, that's probably an advantage.
In addition to the Web sites already mentioned, I recommend the following:
The United States Copyright Office Web site http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation Web site http://www.eff.org/, particularly the Copyright Myths FAQ http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/cpyrt_myths.faq (there may be a more recent version of this document but I can't locate it).
And that's it. Thanks for listening.
© 2000 by David Meadows. All rights reserved. 8 September 2000