Poor Man's Copyright

Thanks for sharing. That's great.

I think that it's because you could put a stamp with ANY date on it at any time, if you send it and it is still closed then that's proof.

Make sense?

Exactly.

I was looking into this method and it seems that it doesnt hold up in court. Posting to yourself is not a secure way of insuring the material is yours. The information i have checked on is for UK only, i have no idea what the law is in the USA or other countries. I have a couple of lawyer friends and they say you would be hard pushed to prove that the envelope hadnt been tampered with ie opened and resealed. also the opposition would argue that you bribed someone for a post mark stamp. the only sure fire way is to hire a 3rd party company to hold your work in a lagal manner. and even if you do that, it would only be protected in the UK. this would mean that anyone online could steal your work as long as they lived in another country. this law seems rather silly to me, but thats how i understand it. if i have made any mistakes please let me know.

There is truly no way to PROVE for certain that the work was yours, unless you had witnesses that saw you do it. And even then, it wouldnt hold up in court.

For instance, if you can prove that there is record of the work's existance before anyones government issued copyright, it takes precidence over the copyright. I could go and steal someones work right now, claim it as my own, and copyright it.

Also, a person could prove that the envelope wasnt tampered with quite easily. You just couldnt PROVE that you didnt have a friend at the post office who post dated or pre dated the envelope for you, or that you didnt mail yourself someone elses work. Ultimately, there is NO way to do this that is unarguable, so if you are that territorial over your work, dont post it online.

Did anyone see the stipulation that Poems and Quotes, for instance, has EVERY RIGHT to publish any poem put on the site EVER (they have the deleted ones in the database), and have no obligation to ask you or give you a portion of the profits? You still have the rights to the work, but when you get an account here you agree to give them personal rights to it as well.