Free Copyright

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Do you have any special work of yours that you thought needed to be copyrighted? Without having to pay any fees? Well Creative Commons is the key! Creative Commons will copyright your work for free! Just select what kind of Copyright license you need, follow the simple directions, add the disclaimer that they provide for you. Any infrigement upon your attributed copyright, set forth in your CC License is punishable by law.

Visit Creative Commons at www.creativecommons.org

Good thread, people should also be aware that as soon as they publish anything, be it written or design, it is automatically copyright to the author.

You don't have to be party to a creative commons license and you NEVER have to pay fees.

All you have to do is create something and it's yours to copyright for free.

BurninDragon08, please research this type of information more fully to provide viewers with a correct article. Misleading people in regards to the law can get you in trouble. (I am not burning you here, you just need to have all the facts before posting threads like this)

hmm....does that mean that my design/web layout is automatically protected by copyright laws??

Yes it does in New Zealand VB skins, check this out...

"...copyright protection comes into existence automatically upon the creation of any original work.

Registration of copyright is not required and no formal system for the registration of copyright exists in New Zealand.

Although not required by law, it is a good idea to include a copyright statement or notice on a work...."

From : http://www.med.govt.nz/buslt/int_pro...ight-prot.html

Thanks for the advice. But I just did some more research. And if you dont get a copyright on your work then someone can go under your nose and steal your work!

Not true, the only way someone can steal a webdesign from you for example is if they can prove it's actually theirs, e.g source files (which they wouldn't have). The moment I put copyright on this skin, it's copyrighted to me.

Thanks for the resource anyways, it's cool.

Copyright ©2004 TalkFreelance.com (tf)

Does this mean that it doesnt have copyright if something were to happy now, seeing as it would need to say 2004-2005?
Or is it of creation in 2004?

copyrighted (is that a word) in 2004, once something is copyrighted its copyrighted no matter what the year says

thats my understanding of it anyway...

Copyright laws are often misunderstood.

In reference to the year thing. The date published with the copyright is the original date of creation. If something says 2003-2005, then that means the original copy was created in 2003, and there have been significant changes to the item throughout the years, warranting new copyrights, but still protected by the original version of the item.

To fully understand copyright laws it requires some research of your country and state/province laws. Another easy way to ensure you have proof of date, print out the screenshot, source code, whatever, mail it to yourself, and keep it sealed. The mail will have a postmark of the date, proving the date of creation. Works well for written pieces and artwork as well.

Just my 2 cents. I know quite a good bit bout laws pertaining to copyright and fair use, etc, so if you have any questions let me know.

Yes it does become copyright to you as soon as you design / write something, however in a court of law, it makes it a lot easier to prove that you are the origional creator.

The best thing is to just send a copy to your lawyer and yorself. Your lawyer can date and file it and when you recieve it from the one u sen yourself, DO NOT open it. Leave it unopened. This is because there is a post date stamp on it and so if it is left unopened, if you need to in court, you can open it and say that you made this on "XX.XX.XXXX".

However at the end of the day, unless you are willing to spend a lot of money in fighting your case, there is very little you can do out of court.