E-mail is copyrighted as soon as it is sent or saved.
All the talk of Google and copyright infringement got me thinking about a worry many writers have -- Will our work be stolen? As an intellectual property (IP) consultant, we usually don't do a lot of copyright work -- mainly patents and trademarks. As an author, who's created a piece of IP in the form of a book, I knew that my work was protected once I wrote it down. So copyright protection for a work begins when the work is fixed in some sort of "tangible form." This included writing, typing to paper, and saving it on a computer, but here it is in detail, courtesy of SFWA:
According to the Berne Convention (the international source for copyright law), an original expression is protected by copyright as soon as it is fixed in tangible form. In other words, the moment the words leave your brain and land on paper or the computer screen, you’re protected, and no further action–including registration–is required. The term of copyright guaranteed by Berne is the lifetime of the creator plus 50 years.
Specific copyright laws vary among the more than 90 countries that are signatory to Berne. In the USA, for instance, copyright applies to economic rights only, and the moral rights provisions enacted in other nations, intended to help protect the personality and reputation of the author, don’t exist. Many countries have also extended the term of copyright–in the USA and much of Europe, the term is the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years.
Berne ensures copyright protection without requiring any formalities (such as copyright registration) as a prerequisite to bringing an infringement suit. As a result, most countries have no formal copyright registration process. If you’re a US or Canadian writer, do you need to register? If you’re submitting book-length work to literary agents or publishers, the answer is no. Registration confers no additional copyright protection; all it does is give you legal standing to sue for infringement. But infringement is not something you need to worry about at the submission stage. Theft of unpublished work is so rare as to be functionally nonexistent.
In the USA, there are a number of online services that will register copyright for you with the US Copyright Office, for a fee. You can even purchase software that provides you with addresses and copyright forms. Don’t waste your money–it isn’t difficult to register copyright yourself, and it will cost you a good deal less than the services (currently, registration costs between $35 and $65, depending on whether you register online or on paper). For freelancers and others wanting to register more than one piece, the US Copyright Office offers a multiple-registration option.
So don't worry... your work in protected!
The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day
Over the past few months I've been watching the Google Books brouhaha over their digital book settlement to create the world's largest on-line library. At the center of the fray sits U.S.District Judge Denny Chin, who said during Thursday's hearing, that he did not know when he would issue a ruling on the proposed settlement, which has already been revised once to satisfy concerns raised by the Justice Department. Chin said he had received volumes of comments from the public that merited careful consideration.
As an writer with a published work coming out soon, and a someone who's grown up in Silicon Valley and reviews technology and innovation for a living, I'm stuck in the middle -- I believe an author's works should be protected, while I love the fact that books live on via technologocial advances, like Google Books, on-line.
During a marathon hearing before Judge Chin, lawyers representing the Justice Department, children's book authors, privacy advocates and business competitors said Google's agreement with some authors and publishers should be rejected because it would violate copyright laws. The opponents also argued that the $125 million settlement -- which would allow Google to scan and publish millions of out-of-print titles -- could give the company an unfair edge over other online publishers in the nascent but exploding market for digital books.
While Judge Chin did not offer clear guidance into his thinking during the hearing, several lawyers said subtle clues could be drawn from his questions. The sometimes impatient judge took many notes and asked lawyers for Google and its settlement partners -- the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers -- about a controversial portion of the settlement that would automatically include the holders of rights to titles unless they voluntarily opt out of the program.
The judge also asked about so-called orphan works, whose authors and rights holders can't be found. Google and its critics have sparred over how many books fall into that category, with estimates from a few million to tens of millions of titles. Google has said it would try to find rights holders of these works, but critics say the deal is designed to give Google exclusive rights to these works and protect it from lawsuits from rights holders.
So, now we wait and see what judge Chin has to say...
