LaShandar D. Cook ||||

Poor Man’s Copyright

The never-ending worry probably for all writers, and artists in general, is the fear of someone stealing your hard work.

My solution for years has been to simply email myself. Usually using two different services (e.g. emailing from my Yahoo account to my GMail account) since that leaves a copy in two places. Email seems like it’d be a lot harder, if not impossible, to fabricate. And it’s free.

I also regularly use Google Docs since it not only logs your work but it additionally tracks all of your changes. And, fo course, it’s also free.

I recently suggested these methods to a friend (fellow writer), and we somewhat butted heads on it. Of course, ultimately, an official copyright is preferred, but, in the meantime, and in general, I think email will suffice. I’ve yet to figure out a way to tamper with original messages; so I think it’d definitely hold up in court.

At the least, it’s definitely a lot safer than the old-fashioned Poor Man’s Copyright, which I mentioned to another writer-friend a while ago. It’s just too easy to send yourself an unsealed envelop and then, way after the fact, clog it up with your alleged creation. I’m pretty sure that won’t hold up in court; so I won’t waste my time, or money (it can cost a small fortune to print up a manuscript), on that.

No matter what I do I know I won’t rest easy until publication, but at least now I can sleep at night.

Oh, lastly, and the purpose of this entry, I just discovered an unofficial copyright service called Numly, which generates unique IDs to protect your work. I’m just not sure if they allow your work to be publicly accessible. Even if it is monitored, every writer isn’t open to that. But it’s free, too, so worth considering if you’re paranoid.