Copyright for Writers

by eibhlin morey macintosh

Your writing is already copyrighted as soon as the ink hit the paper. To defend it in court and recover your court costs, you can formally copyright it if you like. I don't recommend this for most articles, but if you want that peace of mind, you can learn more at the U.S. Government's Copyright website.

But, what about the resources that you use when you're writing? How much information from others is "too much?" And when does something become "public domain?"

For the latest information about what's in the public domain in the U.S. and internationally, see Cornell University's chart. Generally, works published in the U.S. before 1923 or internationally before 1909 is in the public domain. However, there are exceptions, such as J. M. Barrie's novel, Peter Pan.

But what about more recent works? How closely can you copy borrow from another writer's work?

When I talk with writers about copying and copyright law, many of them believe the urban legend that you can copy someone else's work as long as you change three words in each sentence.

Likewise, articles that you see online are protected by copyright law whether they bear a copyright notice or not. If you copy someone else's work without their permission, that is plagiarism.

According to Nolo, plagiarism is "Passing off someone else's work as your own, whether word for word or merely the creative ideas." Plagiarism is against the law.

If you want to see if any of your own articles have been illegally copied by others, you can use the service provided by Copyscape.com.

If you're copied often, Copyscape's services can be very helpful.

If you'd like to double-check your own article against existing work online, here's one way to do that:

• 1. Create a webpage with your article on it. (You don't need to HTML the article. Just paste the text on a webpage so that the sentences appear online.)



• 2. Enter the URL of that article in the Copyscape form (linked above).
Within minutes, you'll see if too many of your phrases match someone else's.

However, this won't necessarily show if you've used someone else's intellectual property. It's best never to "borrow" ideas too closely from any one source. Beyond that, I recommend the following books. And, you should consult a copyright lawyer for reliable advice.