How to protect the rights to your work before sending it to the editor?

[oggbashan]

Yes, IF you are publishing for money, it is a good idea to protect your copyright.

The US makes it more difficult to do than it is in most European countries. In the US you must register your work at the Copyright Office and pay the fee. Anything else is a waste of effort. Only US registered copyright is valid.

In the UK and most European countries your copyright is automatically protected from the moment of creation. All you might have to prove is priority and there are ways to do that such as sealing a hard copy in a registered envelope posted to yourself. That does NOT work in the US.

Registering your copyright is one thing; protecting a registered copyright is very different and almost impossible. Just look at how many movies (all fiercely copyrighted by organisations with their own lawyers) are available to download from multiple sites on the internet.

Literotica is based in the US. When you post a story on Literotica you are publishing IN the US and US copyright law applies. No registration at the US copyright office? You have NO copyright in the US.

Whatever copyright you have is useless when anyone can visit Literotica without signing in, highlight your words, right click and copy. All Literotica might have is an ISP and you can get disposable ISPs. You would have no idea who has copied your story nor why. If it is reposted elsewhere the only redress you have is a DMCA notice to the site host. But many site hosts are themselves the thieves of copyrighted works so they'll ignore your notice. No one polices the internet so if you are ignored? Tough.

If you think you can stop your work being stolen even if you have legal copyright? You are deluding yourself. Disney can't stop copyright thieves. MGM can't stop copyright thieves. If they can't, you as an individual have NO possibility of catching and sueing the thieves.

Even if you could most of them will probably be people with no assets to pay compensation or your legal costs - the teenager in his Mom's basement.

 

[Green_Knight]

This debate has encouraged me to put some finishing touches to some notes on copyright that I've had hanging around for a while. Let me say right from the start, though, that the pursuit of a copyright claim is generally a pointless activity unless a lot of money is at stake. If you don't want your work to be copied, keep it safe at home and don't let anyone see it. Then sit back and watch while someone achieves an international best-seller with something almost identical and try not to cry!

So, while I don't recommend that Lit authors waste their time pursuing breaches of copyright, some may also publish for profit and, for them, it may be worth debunking a few of the myths about copyright that keep cropping up.

Myth 1: mailing or emailing yourself a copy of your work to establish when it was written. This is a waste of time. No court will accept such a 'proof' since it is far too easy to forge or fiddle. Many countries have a voluntary system for 'registering' new works which the courts will accept but lodging the manuscript with a lawyer or bank will often do as well. Almost all of these 'registering bodies' will charge a fee; you have to decide if it's worth it.

Realistically, the main circumstance in which such a sealed copy will be of use is if you are sued by someone else for breach of copyright; you can then show that you did not copy their 2016-published novel because you wrote yours and sent it to your solicitor in 1954.

In the case of an editor, choose one you can trust. Ask for the names of other authors they've helped and check with them. And take a look at some of the stories they've supposedly improved – they may not be thieves but they may not be very good. Don't send the full story straightaway; send a rough outline and ask the prospective editor to confirm that he or she is not working on anything similar. You're not giving anything away as you cannot copyright a story idea, only its execution.

Myth 2: you need to register copyright in the USA. This only applies to works written in the US by US citizens and is only necessary if the US citizen wants to file an infringement suit in the US courts. Under the Berne Convention (which the US finally signed in 1989, nearly 100 years after everyone else), copyright must be automatic; it is prohibited to make formal registration of copyright a requirement. For non-US citizens or US citizens writing abroad, there's no point in registering in the US; all works written in another Berne convention signatory country since 1989 automatically qualify for copyright protection without registration in the US.

Myth 3: you cannot sue for breach of copyright unless you have lost money or your reputation has been damaged. Nor can you sue if you've given away your story for free.

None of these things are true. Bizarrely, someone once sued for breach of copyright in a press release he'd issued – and won! Work that one out. The Berne Convention, which governs copyright across most of the world including the USA, was based on the French concept of the 'right of the author' (droit d'auteur), rather than the Anglo-Saxon concept of copyright that was concerned primarily with economic considerations. Copyright infringement is generally actionable per se – no damage needs to be proven or sustained. There is either a breach of copyright or there is not.

In most jurisdictions, you can take action for breach of copyright simply to have the breach stopped. You can sue not just for any financial losses you have incurred as a result of the breach, but also to recover compensation for any earnings the other party has made off the back of your work. So, if you've put a free story on Lit and someone has copied it and is selling it on Amazon, you can sue for the earnings they've made from it. Alternatively, you can insist that they pay for a licence to continue using your work if you are happy for them to do so. If the case is decided in your favour, the other party gets to pay court and legal costs – though they may be difficult to recover in an international environment.

Myth 4: When you post something on a US-based website, US copyright law applies. That's rather like saying that because my book was printed in Thailand, Thai copyright law applies to it. Even in the USA, copyright exists in a work from the moment it is completed, not when it is published. In practice, any international copyright questions – not just internet ones – are complex. This article summarises some of those complexities in terms of who can sue who and where.

Myth 5: issuing a DMCA notice is the only way to get copyright material removed from the internet. DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is a US law which has no applicability elsewhere in the world. In addition, a challenge to a DMCA notice will be made through the US courts so anyone who is not a US citizen or resident is immediately at a disadvantage. So, if you're not in the US, forget DMCA and use your own local laws to the same effect.
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But, just to repeat my opening remarks, unless you have a lot of time and money to spare, or if your copyrighted work has substantial value and the person you're suing has some financial worth, forget it.