From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2008 - 11:03:10 PDT
You are right, you do indeed Barbara.
The U.S. is now part of the Berne convention.
You are also sort of right about the proving it, as the U.S. got exemptions from certain aspects of the Berne convention that can possibly limit the legal aspect of things if you havn't registered.
Earlier in the history of U.S. copyright, you had to have a copyright notice in order to be covered and your copyright only existed for 28 years after publication, after that you had to renew it. This changes after Jan 1st 1978. (Now copyright is automatically yours whether you registered it or put a notice on it or not)
Works copyrighted before Jan 1st 1964 and not having been renewed in their 28th year can have their copyright expire.
U.S. copyright is all incredibly complicated. I hope this little summary gives you some idea and I would go into more detail but I'm bizzarely, even more short of time than when I wrote that last email, as when I arrived at the other place I found out that time was shorter than I imagined it to be although possibly long enough, but not long enough for a detailed discussion on U.S. copyright law.
Anyway I must run away now to think about time. :)
love
Freya
--- On Mon, 6/30/08, Barbara Bader <email suppressed> wrote:
> From: Barbara Bader <email suppressed>
> Subject: Re: All copyright renewal records now online and searchable
> To: email suppressed
> Date: Monday, June 30, 2008, 5:51 PM
> My understanding had been that in the U.S. you automatically
> have copyright
> to your own work. The problem is proving it...if you
> don't register.
> BB
>
>
> On 6/30/08 8:10 AM, "Freya"
> <email suppressed> wrote:
>
> >> None of these resources are complete, and none
> list works
> >> of non-US origin. And copyright status of a work
> depends
> >> on many factors, including manner of publication
> and
> >> presence or absence of a copyright notice in legal
> form.
> >
> > The U.S. has a very different copyright history to the
> rest of the world.
> > Here in Europe for example it's long been the case
> that copyright is yours
> > when you make the work and you didn't have to
> register or renew the copyright.
> > Until the U.S. joined the berne convention it was all
> messier and fuzzier than
> > that and even since joining there are legal
> concessions to try and justify the
> > existance of the U.S. copyright office.
> >
> > Works outside of the U.S. aren't registered and
> don't need to be in order to
> > be protected (same with modern U.S. works). Best to
> assume that non-US works
> > are covered by the Berne convention.
> >
> > Hope that helps. I would go into detail, but as usual
> lately I'm in the middle
> > of being somewhere else. ;)
> >
> > love
> >
> > Freya
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> __________________________________________________________________
> > For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.