You can find an amazing array of songs, movies, and TV episodes on YouTube. If you are ever unable to find the video you are looking for, it is probably because of copyright protections. A copyright is a legal certification that a certain person or company owns a creative work. No one is allowed to distribute or reproduce the work without the copyright owner’s permission. If you create a written text or one of the other kinds of works eligible for copyright, you are its owner even if you do not formally register a copyright for it with the U.S. Copyright Office. Why, then, do people spend the effort in registering copyrights if you still own your work without them? In some situations, registering a copyright prevents others from taking credit for your work and profiting from it. You do not need a lawyer to prepare a copyright application for you, but you should have a California legal document assistant prepare it.
Why You Should Copyright Your Work
A copyright is a public declaration that you own the rights to a creative work; most people of the time, the person who registers copyrights the copyright to a work is the creator of that work. These are the main reasons to register a copyright for your work:
- You plan to publish the work.
- Since the copyright form asks you to specify the date of creation, you want to prove that you created a text or other creative work before someone else created a similar one.
- You do not want the work to circulate widely and want to control who can distribute it.
- You do not want others to take credit for your ideas or make money off of them.
Which Works are Eligible for Copyright?
You may have heard that copyright protection is for books whereas patents are for inventions, but in fact, several types of works are eligible for copyright. The following types of creative works are eligible for copyright:
- Texts – fiction and non-fiction books of any length, as well as articles, short stories, and poems.
- Performable Works – the written texts of stage plays and the screenplays of films, as well as sheet music.
- Visual artwork – two-dimensional drawings and paintings and three-dimensional sculptures.
- Sound recordings – audio-only recordings of musical performances or other sound-only creative works.
- Audiovisual works – audiovisual recordings of live-action or animated films of any length, episodes of a dramatic or documentary series, or video games.
A People’s Choice Makes the Copyright Application Process Painless
If you plan to publish your work or perform your musical compositions in public, it is a good idea to protect your intellectual property. While some expensive copyright lawsuits have been filed, such as about whether famous songs like “Stairway to Heaven” copied copyrighted material, even if you do not expect to become famous, it is still a good idea to copyright your work.
The good news is that you do not need a rock star budget to copyright your creative work. Contact A People’s Choice for affordable document preparation services, including copyright applications, done by a registered legal document assistant. Don’t delay protecting your creative work. Call us today at 800-747-2780.
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