How to Copyright Your Work

Posted on March 18th, 2009 in How To by George W Whitehead

Plagiarism, the bane of every original writer. These steps may go some way in helping you to overcome it.

So, you have written a literary masterpiece, how do you protect it, how do you make sure no one else steals it?

If you have published it on the internet the blunt answer is, you can’t. There are billions of pages to trawl through so the chances of finding out if your work has been plagiarised is virtually nil.

Searching for Plagiarism

You could use a dedicated search engine, for example ‘Copyscape’, that searches the internet for plagiarised copies of your work. This is not 100% guaranteed to actually find them though.

‘Copyscape’ can be found here www.copyscape.com

Copyright

Copyright Registration

Most countries have a Copyright Office where, for a fee you can register your work. This will ensure protection if you are ever involved in a copyright infringement suit.
The fee is a lot more than pennies, so if you are one of those writers that have an output of a great many pieces of work per year, this can be a very costly business.

Poor Man’s Copyright

If you can’t afford to register your work through a copyright office you can try what is referred to as the ‘Poor man’s copyright.’

This traditionally meant posting a copy of your work to yourself or a third party and storing it unopened until needed as proof of ownership. This is frowned on now because it is open to abuse. You could, if you were unscrupulous, send an unsealed envelope to yourself and then insert plagiarised work inside it at a later date.

There is a similar way to do this that is acceptable by the UK Patent Office.
The Patent Office says, “It may help copyright owners to deposit a copy of their work with a bank or solicitor or send a copy of their work to themselves by special delivery (which gives a clear date stamp on the envelope), leaving the envelope unopened on its return; this could establish that the work existed at this time.”

If you upload your work to an online publishing site e.g. ‘Triond’ or publish it on your blog then it will have some sort of date stamp that may be accepted in law.

I Do it My Way

Personally, I use the belt and braces approach. What I do is, at the bottom of my article type in Copyright, put a copyright symbol next to that, then I type the year and next to that I type my name,
i.e. Copyright © 2009 George W Whitehead.
I then email it to myself so that it has some sort of time/date stamp on it.

Whether this method would be accepted in law, I don’t know but I feel just that little bit safer doing it this way..

Copyright Symbol

To insert the copyright symbol on a PC keyboard,

hold down Ctrl and Alt at the same time and press C [Ctrl+Alt+C]

or

hold down Alt and type 0169 on the number pad on right hand side of your keyboard [Alt+0169].

For a Mac,

hold down Option and press ‘g’ [Option+g].

Some word processing programs have an ‘Insert’ tab. Press this and choose the ‘Special Characters’ option’ click on the © box and then press OK.

Copyright Information on a Paper Document.

If you are sending a hard copy to an editor of a magazine or newspaper, the preferred option is to place this copyright information at the top right hand corner of your document.

Whichever method you use, unfortunately it only works on the same principle as a padlock. It’s only there to deter the honest!

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Tags: Copyright, copyright office, copyright registration, copyright symbol, copyscape, Plagiarism, poor man’s copyright, Publish, published, publishing, UCC, Universal Copyright Convention

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20 Responses to “How to Copyright Your Work”

Glynis Smy
March 18th, 2009 at 9:47 am

Useful article, thanks for sharing.
Louie Jerome
March 18th, 2009 at 10:33 am

Very informative article, George.
Alina Beck
March 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

Thanks George – I can never remember how to find that little copyright symbol!!
LOVELY HONEY
March 18th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

Very intellectual article,
I copy right my poems too,
All of them hope no one will steal.

Some one advised me to come to triond,
And so hopefully in my life,
I should feel relieved

Thanks all the same,
No fame,
Will come my way,
If it ever does I will be far above,
The slow moving clouds,
Which will sooner than not,
Turn into rain,
And my name will come back,
Again and again
LOVELY HONEY
islandgirl
March 19th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

I don’t really copywright my articles but your tips are getting into my brain.

Thank you for this
Kevoow
April 5th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Well done, nice article!
maranatha
April 14th, 2009 at 7:33 pm

Thank you for these tips, I need to start researching this. My work doesn’t seem to be of a caliber to need it, but you never know….
Mrs M
April 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

It is awful when I see people try to pass of other peoples work as their own. You gave some really helpful tips here.
Gijo George
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:57 pm

This article is very informative.
h20ho
April 24th, 2009 at 2:56 am

Great copyright article!
marisolflamenco
April 28th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Very informative…Thanks for sharing
mdartist
May 25th, 2009 at 12:14 am

This was a very imformative article for me. I never knew how to get a copywrite symbal typed onto my poems. Thanks
Thomas Hodge
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm

I really do like the information. I really do like the poor man’s copyright. I think that will be very useful for many of us.
Rajiv Sighamony
June 8th, 2009 at 7:49 am

I think I must try your method because I was really worried about the copyright issues. Thanks for letting me know.
Alexiandria M Michaels
June 12th, 2009 at 10:32 pm

I do love your poor man’s method. i think I am going to have to start doing that!
HelloSiti
June 16th, 2009 at 10:30 am

Hay I know why in Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the members don’t need to register their copyrights?
HelloSiti
June 16th, 2009 at 10:36 am

Copyright by myself is interesting.
Diverseblogger
June 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

I really liked this article. I also like it because it was written on my birthday. Thank you
Hazel Crowther
July 7th, 2009 at 6:17 am

Good information. Thank you.
Alexiandria M Michaels
July 20th, 2009 at 10:22 am

it’s me again..! i found your article again and read it again.. this time i bookmarked it. hope you don’t mind i added you as a friend..