Copyright Your Material

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I've made this page and will update it as new information comes to me, but please make sure you ALWAYS copyright your work! It's a mistake not to!

I've also made a forum called "Copyrighting Your Material," so please go there or leave a comment here if you have anything to say or add!

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What is copyright?
It's basically protecting your work so no one can legally 'steal' it and claim it to be their own work. Though this is stated really only for the Copyright Act in the United States of America, it won't hurt for foreign people to copyright here, either.


Writersco
Writersco doesn't stamp copyright to your work (something that Elfwood does, by posting the '© your name. All rights reserved!' beneath everything you post there. This is something that you need to feel responsible for), but WritersCo does cover the European Copyrighting deal-io, meaning that all work posted here is automatically yours... but it's better to be safe than sorry!
And this is not to discredit Writersco, since this is a good community. People won't be stealing works here, since this isn't an 'open to the public' sort of place (needing to apply to get in, for example), and everyone here is serious about writing. Whether or not you choose to use it here, this is good information to carry with you whenever.


Now I'll cover what you need to do to secure your copyright tightly. Most of these aren't really needed here, but if you are going to be published, it's best that you DO know this information.


There are three visible notices that secure your writing, as follows:


"1. The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word "Copyright," or the abbreviation "Copr."


"2. The year of first publication of the work. (or whenever you completed writing it is sufficient).


"3. The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner. (like a pen name)."


http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#noc provided this information, indicated within the apostrophes. (I'm not writing an essay so my cite list won't be perfect!)


So, now that that is covered, you know the basics to keeping your works copyrighted. You can also do this 'officially' but... being my age and experience, I've never had a need to do that and don't quite understand it.


If you want to create the symbol '©', open up Microsoft Word and type '(c)' and it should give you that symbol automatically. If not, just do as says and write 'Copyright' or 'Copr.'


I highly suggest doing this to all your works and doing a basic check (such as pasting a line of your work into Google and searching), every month to make sure nothing of yours is floating around on the Internet in someone else's name.