But if someone contested it with a date stamped document and a witness, his would be the weaker argument. Unlikely as it seems, a post on the internet isn't the strongest case in a court of law because the code is open to manipulation.
Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action
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But if someone contested it with a date stamped document and a witness, his would be the weaker argument. Unlikely as it seems, a post on the internet isn't the strongest case in a court of law because the code is open to manipulation.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
People can always claim that they came up with something first using fraudulent details. There is no way of stopping that, should they wish to - putting a copyright notice on a post does nothing there. It is exceptionally rare, though, and _not posting things_ makes it much more likely that they would succeed in such a claim.
Anyway, copyright becomes more a shade of grey when it comes to factual stuff I think. Nobody can hold a copyright over an event otherwise there'd be massive problems for historians. The issue is with lifting writing word for word and passing it off as your own.
I don't understand what you mean. If I wrote some words that I intended to publish for monetary recompense that i had registered as copyright, if you then passed that work off as your own I would have a case against you. Do you think Vanilla Ice didn't have to pay anything for using the exact bassline from Queen's Under Pressure? There's a process in law that needs to ascertain that the work was someone else's. It doesn't matter if the bassline obviously sounds the same, Queen would have to prove they wrote it, and when.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
There's no such thing as "registering" (eta: in this country anyway, and even in the US it's just a formal process before legal action). You have copyright on anything you create as soon as you create it. I could _lie_ and say I came up with it first and you just copied it - if it came to court, evidence would have to be weighed.
My understanding is that in days of yore 'registering' work would be done by submitting the work to a solicitor and be date stamped with a witness present then locked in some vault somewhere. The online registration services available can replicate this process nowadays sans solicitor. Or are you suggesting that isn't watertight? Posting to an online forum, as I'm doing in this post now, can make an argument for it being copyright but it's a weak case because the date stamps of the forum can be manipulated and the forum can be hacked. More info here:
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
I'm aware of these services. I work in IP.But look at the costs involved for something that is essentially a free property right.
Also, copyright protects the creative expression of an idea, rather than the idea itself. In particular:
www.ipo.gov.uk
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
They would sort of say that, being a company that makes money from it
Really, nobody uses these people. It doesn't provide you with protection against plagiarism - somebody could quite easily claim that they wrote all that stuff before, and come up with other evidence. The companies have no evidence that what you submit to them isn't already copyright to somebody else. At best it's documented evidence that you did a certain thing at a certain time that would be considered in court if it came to court. All sorts of other evidence also would be - online backups, emails to publishers, etc.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
What FridgeMagnet and myself are saying is that these copyright registration services in the UK are not necessary to claim ownership of a creative work, not that such services aren't watertight.
What is your suggestion then? I took that route previously because i knew no other. What that website suggests is right though, if you can provide a body of evidence that you created the work over time then that's a strong argument in an intellectual property dispute. This process can be done for free?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It can be done for free by just having the body of work. If you've been taking photos, you have the negatives or RAW files. If you've been writing a book, you have all the notes you've made, emails back and forward discussing it, different drafts etc.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Plus a lot of those items be date-stamped by the device you're using, so a trail of evidence can be readily established for free - which is essentially the same service that an third party service is offering. They don't do anything special (although someone did try to convince me to use some complicated envelope once).
They would sort of say that, being a company that makes money from it
Really, nobody uses these people. It doesn't provide you with protection against plagiarism - somebody could quite easily claim that they wrote all that stuff before, and come up with other evidence. The companies have no evidence that what you submit to them isn't already copyright to somebody else. At best it's documented evidence that you did a certain thing at a certain time that would be considered in court if it came to court. All sorts of other evidence also would be - online backups, emails to publishers, etc.
I suppose you're right. In fact i don't know what their secret ingredient is, just that presenting emails and such as evidence isn't strong because anything to do with computer time stamps can be manipulated. I guess the best thing is to present the work in all its drafts to show the work from infancy to maturity. That's easy enough with something hefty like a novel or script, not so easy with snappy lyrics or guitar riff though.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
The DMCA has confused a lot of this, incidentally. Anyone can get anything hosted on a US site taken down by filing a DMCA request claiming that it's their copyright - the hosts have to do that, or they lose protection from being sued if it _is_ a copyright breach. No proof is required and there are no real legal sanctions against people who lie. Under such circumstances you can then counter-file saying "no this is mine" and they (should) bring it back up again.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
The easy answer is that they don't have a secret ingredient.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Any IP dispute will be based on evidence, usually contemporary evidence from the time the IP was created. Depending on what the work is, the evidence may be different. For example, a lot of patent evidence can come down to lab notebooks written by R&D people, countersigned by two others and dated, and the lab books have to be in a certain hardbound format. This dates from before the US changed to a first to invent system, so you had to have a strong virtually unimpeachable evidence chain. But it's a good practice to encourage.
For say a painting, you wouldn't do that, you'd have preliminary sketches, research work, technique studies, false starts perhaps. If all that is signed and dated you have a pretty strong picture of how and when the work was created.
For say a painting, you wouldn't do that, you'd have preliminary sketches, research work, technique studies, false starts perhaps. If all that is signed and dated you have a pretty strong picture of how and when the work was created.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
so this is how the thread ends
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Again, you might have a dated note of the lyrics - a lot of musicians have lyric books for example, and a recording of some riffs you're experimenting with. digital recordings will come with a date stamp and time stamp. Even a few pieces of evidence would show how a song was created.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Better this way than with the fash
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
© T S Eliot
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i can show you the drafts© T S Eliot
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
Beating The Plagiarists!
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
No Reprint
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Copy 18
Well that could have saved me a few quid.
Anyway, there's a much cheaper method, that I'm surprised I can't find a mention of.
- Save your stuff to some tangible medium: paper, flash card, whatever.
- Post it to yourself Royal Mail SIgned For (formerly Recorded Delivery)
- Sign for it
- Don't open it
- For good measure, staple the posting receipt through the flap of the envelope
But equationgirl is (of course) right. This has nothing to do with acquiring copyright protection.
In fact, it's most used for ideas - that are not protected by copyright - things such as proposals for gameshow formats, sent to a production company heavily stamped "In commercial confidence". Production companies are notoriously lairy about nicking ideas.
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