4 ms·

Actually, unpublished works are still copyrighted. The issue here is that you have to show that you created the work if you want to make a copyright claim, whic

• tedunangst 16y ago
  That's true. "not copyrighted" and "unable to prove it" are unfortunately basically synonymous.
• alexqgb 16y ago
  Not so. While courts require registration before they'll enforce your rights, the process itself demands nothing more than an assertion - under penalty of perjury - that the work in question is yours. And that's all. A lack of publication or registration is only a problem if you're challenging the legitimacy someone else's copyright. And yes, that's considerably harder to do - as well it should be. Does this mean that it's easy to register the copyright for unregistered work that isn't yours? Yes it does. But actually doing so is insanely stupid, since getting caught means opening yourself up to both a civil lawsuit from the rightful owner, as well as Federal perjury charges. And since you're involving the courts themselves in your fraud, you can expect whichever judge you face to be especially unforgiving. Unsurprisingly, knowingly falsified copyright registration is not a widespread problem.