Copyright Info

[Israel Stein]

On Sat, 3 Dec 1994, John Minor wrote:

> Found this info rummaging around in Government Docs on WWW.
>
> John Minor
> University of Illinois
>         ________________
>
> WHO CAN CLAIM COPYRIGHT
>
> Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in
> fixed form; that is, it is an incident of the process of
> authorship. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately
> becomes the property of the author who created it.  Only the author
> or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully
> claim copyright.
>
> Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created,
> and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord
> for the first time.  "Copies" are material objects from which a
> work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the
> aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet
> music, film, videotape, or microfilm.  "Phonorecords" are material
> objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory
> definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes,
> CD's, or LP's.  Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed
> in sheet music ("copies") or in phonograph disks ("phonorecords"),
> or both.
>
> HOW TO SECURE A COPYRIGHT
>
> Copyright Secured Automatically Upon Creation

(cut)

That is all essentially correct, under the copyright act that went into
effect on January 1, 1978. (I don't believe there were revisions since
then - this was a major revamping of the law of 1909 or so.)

We are, however, dealing with retention of copyright protection after
publication of copies of the work. In order to retain copyright
protection upon publication of copies one must:
1) Register the copyright.
2) Explicitly state on the copy of the work what rights one wishes to
retain (thus the phrase "All Rights Reserved" which you see on books,
records, magazine articles, photos, etc.)

Publication means "dissemination of copies". Posting here can probably
qualify as publication.

The principle involved is that by publishing a work without explicitly
retaining rights (via registration and appropriate notices) one is deemed
to have "contributed" the work to the public domain.

In other words, even though copyright protection  is secured
automatically upon creation of the work, (i.e. article) it can be lost if
work is published without explicitly secuiring the copyright by
registration and appropriate notices. My source is a legal handbook for
professional photographers. If this sounds like a whole lot of hair
splitting - hey that's what lawyers do for a living.

Israel Stein