The copyright office has a new program for online copyright registration, with online forms, uploading of digital files, and credit card payments.

All copyright registration packages must go through a screening process to check for Anthrax and explosives. Registration takes a lot longer than it used to. This screening process sometimes results in damage to submitted works.

The copyright office does not actually store most of the works sent to them for registration, which should be an interesting problem if ( more like when ) the noxious Orphan Works Bill passes. So you may want to save yourself some postage and the cost of the books and register online.

If you have ever been unfortunate enough to witness a message board discussion about copyright or trademark, not only does the false information circulate faster than the accurate information, but you could save yourself a lot of time and trouble by not going to message boards to get your info. Go to the official copyright and trademark offices FAQs pages on line. Most of your questions about copyright and trademark can be answered there for free.

The copyright FAQ page is here.

For answers on trademarks and patents go here .

This was reposted from the old website, and I hate losing some of the great comments from readers. But here’s one I just couldn’t say goodbye to from Arlnee:

I just got through reading about this girl who is SUPER obsessed with a certain anime series and its main character in particular, so much so that she claims she “owns”it. Her proof is an autograph by the character’s ENGLISH DUB VOICE ACTOR under the words “(Anime character) belongs to (girl’s name)”.

I can’t count how many levels of pathetic I found this, either the idea that she could believe the voice actor had ANY rights over the character he’s voicing, or that she thought others might believe it. I’ve heard of similar stories through fandom through the years but none so egregious. And yes, apparently she is over 18. sigh

I’m afraid there are plenty of crazies out there with weird ideas about copyright and trademark, and we can’t do much about them. But, they confuse matters with their online nattering. There are also plenty of well meaning types out there who post disinformation and really, really don’t have a clue what they are talking about.

Make things easy on yourself and go directly to the official information resources.

Made of Wrong…Filipino Batman movies.

This is obviously not an officially licensed work. Sometime between the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, several Batman features were filmed.

Here we have a bunch of Amazons menacing a young woman. Fear not, the Dynamic Duo will appear any moment!

Despite the fact that these young women are all scantily dressed, there’s not a lot to see. They have the figures of young boys. If you stacked them up, their combined breast measurement wouldn’t match Mamie Van Doren’s.

If these were officially licensed, the foreign rights department at DC should have been lined up and shot en masse.

Utterly, mind-bendingly bad Alyas Batman and Robin below! Gird your loins!

Wait! Where did that coconut come from?

Batman asks: “Would you like Bat-tea? Or Bat-coffee? Or Bat-milk? Bat-juice?”

And in this hideous, and yet oh-so-memorable clip, The Joker and The Penguin do a song and dance number in front of the Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange.

Is there such a thing as a Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange?

Hey, babe. He’s Mr. Joker!

The Penguin character’s name in Tagalog is, apparently, a reference to oral sex.

This is what happens when you do not jealously guard your intellectual property rights. The Penguin blows.

I am very sorry that I cannot find the correspondence that brought this to my attention, so please contact me again so I can credit you.

The Google/ Authors Guild case concerns Google’s attempt to scan all books and post them to the internet without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder. While Google claims this act is their do-no-evil public service as internet uber-librarians, Google stood to earn millions of dollars from the exploitation of these works and had no intent to provide the creators or publishers of same with one penny from the use. While Google claims that only a small portion of any of the books is available for public perusal at any time, this is de facto copyright violation for commercial use.

When I have found these books scanned online via Google, huge sections of the books were available for use by the reader. Nifty for research purposes, but crappy of Google to take advantage of the content provider (author). Google’s empire made some 6 billion dollars last year alone.

(EDIT)While this article, which is written by someone who is clearly unhappy with the settlement, claims Google only made “snippets” of works available. I was able to read 20 pages of copyrighted texts at a time. Basically, entire chapters.

One commenter demanded to know had ANY of the annoyed authors ever made any money on their books after the advance?

Why, yes. I have. Thanks for asking. That’s how I have made almost every penny I have ever made on A Distant Soil.

The Authors Guild settlement will, supposedly, make a portion of the advertising funds raked in by Google payable to authors. How that is all going to work out remains a bit murky.

Further confusing the matter, children’s book illustrations are treated differently under the settlement terms than other book illustrations, which are excluded from the settlement.

This is the correspondence that recently came in the email, directed at all parties who registered to receive info about the claim and settlement outlined here.
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Some claim that none are harmed by internet piracy, and that the viral marketing aspects of it actually help music, book, and video sales.

Regardless, those who assume there is no profit motive in piracy must be missing the ads plastered all over major pirate sites. It is just a matter of time before the laws turn to prosecuting those who provide the income for pirates: the advertisers.

I know several fanfic sites which had their donation accounts shut down by Paypal when they were found to provide adult content. I don’t have any objection to those sites personally, but whatever. The sites began accepting donations by mail and started taking on advertisers.

When you consider the huge number of hits pirate sites get, they are making some bank. Unlike fanfic sites, while creating no content themselves, pirates use the work of others to generate revenue.

Pirating would be a lot less attractive if there were no money in it.

It is difficult and undesirable to go after users of pirated material. Few want to crack down on fans. I certainly don’t. Pirates themselves can simply move their servers to foreign climes and keep right on posting.

But if prosecutors decide to get tough and prosecute advertisers, banks, and online payment services for aiding organized crime, we may see pirates forced out of the game because there is not enough money to pay for bandwidth, equipment, legal, and other services. I expect future prosecutions under the RICO statute, as well as additions to the statute to facilitate this.

Skipis told the audience of his opening speech that his group intends to keep German courts busy with thousands of lawsuits. He also called P2P file sharing “organized crime” and lamented that politicians were ignoring the impact illegal downloads were having on book publishers.

Wherever you stand on intellectual property rights, you can bet that governments world wide are going to start cracking down on internet content even more than before. Pirating costs the economy too much to be ignored by businesses and governments hurting for dollars. According to this article, 95% of music downloads are illegal.

A number of European countries are adopting/debating a 3 Strikes Law. The penalty: cut off internet service to people who have three copyright violations. Some consider the punishment too severe, possibly a violation of human rights.

A recent draft of the French three strikes proposal, backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, calls for a “graduated response.” Through ISP monitoring, users will receive e-mail and registered letter notifications that material was illegally downloaded by the IP address allocated to their accounts. Finally they could be subject to a one-year broadband service suspension. All ISPs would be required to comply with the suspension plan, so a chastised user could not simply switch providers to escape penalty. The plan creates a “High Authority” to oversee the notification process and possible broadband termination. This Authority would be able to obtain one year’s worth of Internet-use records based just on accusations of suspected infringement. The ultimate penalty, discontinuation of service and being placed on a banned user list, would be administered without a trial.

While popular pirate sites and their users claim that their efforts have made movies, music and books more accessible, the claims that they have also raised sales are largely unproven. DVD sales are expected to plummet 11% next year alone. Book sales are also on a major downward trend. While the rise of pirating may have coincided with a prior rise in film, music and book sales, a booming economy may have had more to do with those sales than the publicity efforts of pirates. Individual anecdotal tales of viral marketing abound, but without a control group comparison, or a comparable study of the sales trends of product which did not enjoy booming sales increases, there’s really no way to tell just what effect pirate sales have book by book, movie by movie.

Major governments already block content which is objectionable, such as porn. Expect the legal definition of objectionable material to expand, and to expand in such a way that it will affect both pirates and political speech.

In addition to all the other weird misinformation out there on the internet about copyright – and the rights of creators in general – the most common misconception on the part of many folks is that copyright violation is not a crime. It is merely a civil matter, and not “stealing”.

Copyright violation can be a felony.

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Seeing double?

A letter from Black Mermaid to Whoever the heck Re-Pyper is on Deviant Art. I suspect we’re dealing with a kid who doesn’t know any better, but putting your copyright on other people’s work and dropping it into your gallery is a no-no.

Please remove this from your Deviant art page and from your Gaia Online RP. This is my artwork that you have used without my permission.

Jozef Szekeres
Artist and Creative Director of Black Mermaid Productions.