Discussion:
What is the name of your state? Com. of Mass.
If I post my original work (prose, art, etc.) on my website (with a generalized copyright notice), to what degree am I compromising my ability to register and more aggressively protect the material in the future?
Answer:
If I post my original work (prose, art, etc.) on my website (with a generalized copyright notice), to what degree am I compromising my ability to register and more aggressively protect the material in the future? You can wait to register your copyright as long as you want -- however, your remedies if infringement occur may be limited. Registering doesn't change your protections in any way, only the remedies. If you wait to register, you can only sue for actual damages for any infringing activities that occur prior to registration. Actual damages means provable losses you suffered as a result of the infringement -- typically, unless you were going to make a ton of money but for the infringement, it usually costs far more to litigate than you can ever hope to recover.
However, if the registration is in place prior to the infringing activity, then you can sue for actual damages, as above, or you can sue for statutory damages, which, as the name implies, are damages set by statute, with no need to show actual harm or damages. Further, a registered copyright holder can also sue for injunctive relief, including a judical order to stop infinging, or even siezure and destruction of the infringing items.
So, your remedies are enhanced if you register. A copyright notice is not required, but it can't hurt -- at least it lets someone know that you have some ideas as to what your rights might be!
Answer:
Cool. Now for a weird hypothetical: If someone steals my posted material and copyrights it herself, can she sue me to get it taken off of my site? Can date of creation be proved with digital media?
Answer:
If someone steals my posted material and copyrights it herself, can she sue me to get it taken off of my site? That's always a possibility.
Can date of creation be proved with digital media? Yes, but it can be more difficult than with print or other media, because it is relatively easy to manipulate the date on a computer as compared to other media. You could print out your material in hardcopy form, sign and date them, perhaps have someone else also sign and date them, that would provide extra evidence of date of creation -- not perfect, but better than the digital media alone.
Registration is best of all, because once a registration is issued, the court presumes that the copyright holder was the creator, and that the date of creation is the datew registered with the copyright office -- that shifts the burden of proving who the work belongs to and when to the other party. If you don't have a registration, then suing another person requires you to first prove that you are the creator and the date of creation as part of your case for infringement.
The presumption of ownership and date is a powerful one if an infringement case should ever come up.