Okay so what is everyone's take on copyright? Would you dare post your work on the internet without at least applying for copyright. As far as I know, the law in the states is as soon as the work is finished you own copyright, there is another loophole where you mail it to yourself in an unopened package or letter and it is copywritten. I dont know just asking. Would you take the chance?

Uh, what are you talking about?

You automatically have the copyright for anything you've created, even if it's only half-finished or whatever.

The only point of appling for anything (or mailing it to yourself) is if you later for some reason get into a dispute and need to prove that it is you who has the copyright on something.

Okay maybe I wasn't clear.

1)The laws are applied and enforced easily on land, thus I cannot walk into a record store and take what I want without consequences.

2)They do not apply and are not as easily enforced on the internet. I can easily log into the green demon and download anything I want, thus somebody can, lets say in Finland, download my song and practice it and claim it as their own. Whoever can prove is the owner of the song has the copyright, but more importantly whoever you have TO SUE to stop said lowlife and coupled with the fact that it is out of the US it becomes exponentially complicated.

Basically the whole point of my post is... do you feel comfortable with the slight but eventual risk of theft.

Uh, what are you talking about?

And by the way your attitude sucks.

I don't think the risk of theft should be much of a problem.

For example lets pretend you recorded a full length album and uploaded it to Myspace and some idiot steals all your songs by ripping them to MP3 and calls it his own music and tries to get a record deal. First, no one will want to listen to shitty MP3 rips off Myspace. Second, if he actually DOES manage to get someone to release it and YOU find out then I am sure you could easily win any court case by providing the evidence of original recordings, booked studio time, or if you have your own studio maybe your wife or friends can vouch for being there. This other fellow would have absolutely nothing.

Worse comes to worse you may have some jerk rip your MP3s and start giving them to friends saying they are his own. But unless you have some absolutely great material I doubt that will happen and if you DO have that kind of material than the above example would apply.

People are way too paranoid about the Internet. Chill out!

Okay maybe I wasn't clear.

1)The laws are applied and enforced easily on land, thus I cannot walk into a record store and take what I want without consequences.

2)They do not apply and are not as easily enforced on the internet. I can easily log into the green demon and download anything I want, thus somebody can, lets say in Finland, download my song and practice it and claim it as their own. Whoever can prove is the owner of the song has the copyright, but more importantly whoever you have TO SUE to stop said lowlife and coupled with the fact that it is out of the US it becomes exponentially complicated.

Basically the whole point of my post is... do you feel comfortable with the slight but eventual risk of theft.

Oh, ok, I didn't realise you were referring to this kind of scenario. It seems a bit unlikely, do you know if it happens often? Even if it does happen, I think you would have a very strong case even without any particular preparations, like GuyOne said.

I have posted my songs online, and feel perfectly comfortable about this risk (since it seems like such a small risk, in my opinion).

And by the way your attitude sucks.

Sorry.

Sorry.

No prob. Thanks for the elaboration.

I don't think the risk of theft should be much of a problem.

For example lets pretend you recorded a full length album and uploaded it to Myspace and some idiot steals all your songs by ripping them to MP3 and calls it his own music and tries to get a record deal. First, no one will want to listen to shitty MP3 rips off Myspace. Second, if he actually DOES manage to get someone to release it and YOU find out then I am sure you could easily win any court case by providing the evidence of original recordings, booked studio time, or if you have your own studio maybe your wife or friends can vouch for being there. This other fellow would have absolutely nothing.

Worse comes to worse you may have some jerk rip your MP3s and start giving them to friends saying they are his own. But unless you have some absolutely great material I doubt that will happen and if you DO have that kind of material than the above example would apply.

People are way too paranoid about the Internet. Chill out!

Yes you are right. I am paranoid, this has probably only happened a handful of times in history, and I guess unless your the damn Beatles or Dev himself, there is no cause for worry. No one really gives a crap about my bad guitar playing.

All my music (several full-length albums worth) is available for free from my websites and has been for some time, and I don't worry about it. No trouble so far, but even if there was, I obviously have the original masters and sessions with all the original individual recorded tracks, etc etc... as was already mentioned. I think I'll be fine.

~Josiah