news:noe.falzonPASDEPUB-8722E0.03475606032004@news.povray.org...

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to cash in on this opportunity to ask what is the legal status
> of the "Copyright". I often see artists who append a copyright to their
> images (which of course is justified), but does it has a real
> signification ? Don't we need to register on an official organism which
> would vouch for the autenticity of the work ? Is it enough to write
> "copyright" and your name to make it your intellectual property ?
>
> I had troubles wandering on the web to find these informations.
>

That's an extremely complex, and probably unanswerable question, given the
international nature of the internet.  Copyright laws vary in different
countries, and although the Berne convention theoretically tries to define
them worldwide, as far as I know, most countries' laws have provisions that
specifically limit the Berne convention.

Here in the US, technically you need only put notification on the work when
it is put into a fixed form or medium in order to copyright, so if I put a
notice such as (c) Date MyName on an image, then theoretically I have
copyrighted it.  That is why you see notices on most pictures, because it
serves to announce to would be thieves that the work is claimed by someone
already.

That has no legal weight though, because if someone else tries to claim your
work, your notice means nothing unless you have registered that notice with
the Library of Congress' copyright office.   Registering your work is a
requirement if you need to take action to enforce it.  No legal action can
be brought without registration. But it happens that sometimes the
registration doesn't occur until there is a need to enforce.

That of course means that if you have some reason to initiate legal action,
then there is also a high probability that someone else has registered a
copyright on your work already.  Look up the current Novell -vs- SCO
lawsuit(s) to see how that works...

My approach, which I started years ago for music I have written, is to send
in a copyright registration each year with all my work from the previous
year, registering the work as a collection.  That way I can include multiple
versions of things in case I have released something in more than one form
or medium, and I only have to pay one registration fee.  If I register each
work separately I have to pay the fee for each work.  A work can be
registered more than once, so if there is a need to register a particular
work for a particular reason I am still free to do so, while my original
registration as part of a collection will still serve to pre-empt anyone
attempting to register my work to themself.

RG - theft is NOT the sincerest form of flattery

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