Copyrights/Trademarks

[Venusian Broon]

I didn't see you'd edited your original post before I'd finished my earlier one, VB, so I missed the extra bits:
Um... I really think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick here.

The US registration is legit and registration brings some advantages, and is necessary if you intend to sue. This UK firm may be a legitimate business, I don't know what you've seen and what they promise to provide so I can't comment further (but if you want to give the details I'll have a look), but registering with them would be a total waste of money.

Sorry! I should have said - 'Ah, look there is a UK company doing something like the US registration thing as a service.' It was just a thing I saw in passing and I never had any intention of doing anything other than mentioning it.

It was clear to me that the whole registration thing and discussion around was just for the United States . (As I'm unsure on what is done in the UK )

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

What you're asking about isn't really copyright. As the others have said this technically kicks in the moment you write something. The problem is proving it's yours in court if you need to. The moment this becomes relatively straight forwards is when you publish. That's why a lot of people say it kicks in for practical purposes when you publish. So what you want is some way of protecting an unpublished work that somehow someone has got hold of and put out under their own name.

My way of doing this is simple. Make a regular back up on a dvd. Every month say. This way you can show the document / book in its various stages of production. If someone does do the dirty - and I would stress that this is unlikely - you can then show the history of writing the document which no one who simply took your work and copied could.

So for example my book Maverick ended up at 190K. Someone could in theory have simply cut and pasted a version of it prepublishing had they had access to it. But what are the chances that they could show the version of Maverick from 1 month, 2 months, 3 months etc before publication? Fairly much nil. And to try and write these sorts of documents assuming I wrote / edited 10K a month on the book, would require them to write millions of words.

But really what you need to do is ask yourself how would someone get your doc in the first place? Is your computer insecure? Start adding passwords. Do you not trust the people you want to show it to? Don't show it to them.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Make a regular back up on a dvd

They fade, Archival "gold" reflective CDs or a USB/Flash or dockable HDD is far better. A powered off HDD lasts best.

Otherwise, yes.

 

[Venusian Broon]

They fade, Archival "gold" reflective CDs or a USB/Flash or dockable HDD is far better. A powered off HDD lasts best.

Otherwise, yes.

Not to mention software & hardware obsolescence. A few years back I was charged to get all the data off a hard drive of a server that we'd purchased in ~1999 and last used in 2004. Only five years later or so and it took me weeks to move only ~4GB of data as nothing 'modern' could connect with it (It had one, just one, USB port but I think was just version 1.0 or something earlier!).

So the moral of the story is: if you are upgrading your system - 1) immediately make sure your backup works with it 2) If not, upgrade your backups as well. It can be very easy to be caught out. This might just be my machine, but now that USB sticks are ubiquitous and software is downloaded down broadband, the DVD/CD player on my PC is utter pants and seems to be remarkably error strewn, occasionally incapable of reading it seems the simplest of discs. I no longer burn DVDs or CD as I can't guarantee that it will work.

So do what Ray suggests!

(Actually paper probably will last the longest - so a paper copy of the completed work makes sense to me! Impervious to EM pulses, hackers etc... You could argue fire is bad for paper, but just as bad for PCs and hard-drives as well I'd wager. And you can purchase a fireproof safe to keep paper/hard-drives inside if you are paranoid.)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I have a 286 that can take MFM drives. I've read 1982 HDD drives in 2004.
A PCI SCSI card and suitable PC for every kind of wire cable SCSI drive ever made, ditto IDE.
PC to read 3", 3.5", 5.25" Floppies (I gave away my 8" drives, with adaptor info for 3.5" controller).
I have PC software and bootable DOS to read about 1200 CP/M and other floppy formats.
I can read FAT, FAT32, NTFS (1993 to current), EXT2, EXT3, RieserFS, and other HDD formats.
I have a HW card to support reading pre -white book CDI video, there are many other CD formats that new Mac, Linux or Windows machine doesn't support any more, assuming it has an optical drive at all.

Flash (USB, CF, SD card etc) does fade in about 5 to 10 years unless re-written. A home written CD or worse DVD uses changes in a dye, only the grooves are pre-pressed. This will erase in days in daylight, especially DVD! The bought discs have the data pressed too, as pits in the groove, so even if the reflective layer rots or it de-laminates it can be repaired and read. Not so home 'burnt' writeable DVDs. The Magneto Optic discs were stable. Archival CDs (usually also gold coloured) use more expensive dye and are slower to write. They too should be be kept in the dark.

Floppies and HDD if in a dry atmosphere and not used (or kept powered) will last maybe 100 years. Perhaps months in the damp. All HDD unsealed. They have very fine dust filter on the air port. So vapour / gas mixed with air (cigarette tar, steam, SO2 ) can get in and corrode or contaminate the works or the magnetic surface. Larger and older HDD use aluminium substrate for the magnetic coating, smaller drives are usually coated glass.

Periodically read important archives on to new but reliable storage. Keep the old copy.

You really don't want to know about the costs and time involved with Tape Archives! I have 2 x kinds of linear tape and 1 kind helical tapes. I doubt any of the tape drives are working (though I have them). I think I have all the stuff on HDD.

Our server in 1994 was only 40Mbyte, now I have two, each with 2T byte. That's 2,000,000 Mbyte approx. each. I mirror between them and also use a USB SATA dock with a full spec NAS quality HDD to also back up. My first HDD was in 1982 and was 5 M Byte

All my own created content is on USB stick, 2 x laptops, server, back up drive and on my Hosting in a different country.

My CD collection is on a Micro SD card, Server, 2 x laptops, and a 160G Byte HDD in an Archos player. Eventually it may be cost effective to store all my video collection at full quality on HDD for easier access. I bought a Digital 8 camera some years ago and started digitising my own Analogue 8mm movies using it as a Firewire bridge. It's very time consuming though.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

paper probably will last the longest

Only if acid free archival!
I have some 1990s paper backs in harder to read condition than some 1920s documents I have!

 

[chrispenycate]

That's the Geneva convention. But UK and USA are working to change it that you should have to register or else it's an Orphan Work that Big Corporations (Google, BBC, Murdoch, Apple etc) can make money out of.

Shame on them.

Umm that's the Convention of Berne - despite the centre of the OMPI (that's probably WIPO in English) being in Geneva, the Geneva convention is about war, not intellectual property.

The United States only signed the convention of Bern under Reagan, years after all civilised countries had. They still haven't entirely implemented it, so piracy of international authors by Americans is only protected if the non-american has registered his oeuvre with an American lawyer. Obviously, any plagiary of Americans…

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Convention of Berne

My Bad, you are quite right.
The US was printing UK stuff for years not a cent in royalties. Loads of Victorian Authors complained. Some in person.
This is partly why many Publisher backed UK distributors didn't wholesale US publications.
Also there is STILL a disparity over Performance right on Radio.
Also USPO frequently since creation ignores prior art and claims.

There is other stuff too. (Cinema, Light Bulbs etc). This is why Marconi set up a US company with US partners such as GE (to avoid US IP theft). Though eventually the US Government forced him to divest. It became RCA. (Sadly gone since 1986). RCA bought Victor Talking Machine Co, that had commercialised Emile Berliner's Gramophone. They owned HMV. HMV bought UK part of Columbia (Columbia Graphophone) and became EMI in 1928. RCA got Marconi to Divest his loss making Domestic Radio to EMI (Marconiphone). The USA part of Columbia became CBS. EMI/RCA jointly developed Modern TV. Sony ended up with parts of CBS and EMI. GE bought remains of RCA in 1986 and then sold brand to French Thomson. Victor USA also before RCA bought them set up Victor Japan. better known as JVC. So "Nipper" the painting Edison turned down (phonograph overpainted with gramophone) was bought by Berliner and was HMV icon in UK, RCA in USA and still used in stylised form (only ever in Japan) by JVC. UK HMV was sold off by Sony or EMI and died recently. So IP can get convoluted (i.e. Nipper logo).

I believe Canada got seriously annoyed with USA over copyright.

This is why I oppose USA backed Regional Coding of DVDs and BD and the way US sells program Rights in a way contrary to EU single market.