3 Comments for How Do You Protect Writing Put On A Website Against Copyright Infringement?

• 1. Persipho  |  July 9th, 2009 at 5:54 am

  You cannot. There is no such thing as Copyright Police. So while someone plagiarizing your work is in fact illegal, unless you are willing to hire a lawyer to defend you, you are out of luck. And that is assuming you are even aware that someone is stealing from you. When I had a story stolen off a website, it was almost a year later when someone sent me this story to read and I recognized it as my own with another name. In that year, there is no telling how many people stole it.
  No, there is no point. If you are going to post online, you take your chances. What if someone in India steals it and you live in Nebraska? Are you going there to take them to court? With a lawyer who gets about 400 bucks an hour? Nope. You are just going to count your losses.
  Of course some amateurs are going to tell you about the so called “Poor Man’s Copyright” where you mail your work to yourself. Proves nothing except that on that day, you were in possession of those pages. I could mail myself a copy of War and Peace, but that doesn’t make me Tolstoy. It is inadmissible in court without other documenting evidence… and the previously aforementioned lawyer.
  There is only one copyright that is 100% safe. Write your stuff. Back it up. Store it in your desk drawer until you are ready to send it to a publisher or agent. If you choose to post online, you do so at your own risk. 8 year olds know how to get around PDF, watermarks and all that other so called protective jazz. Useless.
  And my friend, because of all the plagiarism going on, 99% of publishers today will not touch a work previously posted online because they simply do not want to get into a legal battle over ownership. Instead, they will just reject you.
  If you want to post stuff and have people comment on it and get the praise from your peers – go ahead and post. If you want to publish – keep it on your backup drive and publish when ready.
  Besides, every time you edit or change your story, the copyright needs to be redone. From the time you start a project until the time it is on the bookshelves in stores, it might undergo 10 or 15 revisions … sometimes more. That means a LOT of copyrights. The above posters are correct. If and when you sell your work, as a part of a Standard Author’s Contract, the publisher will do the copyright of the final version for you in your name.
  Pax-C

• 2. pj m  |  July 9th, 2009 at 9:05 am

  Rattler,
  You can put some sort of copyright on it, but on the web you are fair game. When writing in MS-Word it is easy to change the date that the story was originally written. By copy and pasting your work in MS-Word (by someone stealing it) they automatically set another date.
  If it’s not going to be published either now or in the future, then I wouldn’t worry about it. The copyright is on the web when you place the story on the page, so that might cover you to a point.
  PJ M

• 3. TheVet  |  July 9th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

  If you posted it than it’s too late. If it’s not published why get it copyrighted? If you value your writing enough to think someone would steal it why would you consider putting it out there in an unprofessional format?
  Get it published, the publisher will do the copyright, then you may stand a chance of protecting it. But, in reality, it’s a pretty slim chance.
  Get over it, that’s the best advice you’ll get about plaigarism paranoia. Get over it.

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