Well your country sucks!! In Australia everything is copyrighted when you make it, there is no government agency for copyright, only for trademarks and patents
No, works are copyrighted in the U.S. once they are set in "fixed form," whatever that means. Registration with the Copyright office is not necessary, but is recommended. (emphasis added) Copyright.gov
Ok. So, you are saying, I can go to any random website that hasn't filed copyright papers, print out a copy of the site and suddenly I'm the copyright holder? Be serious for a second.
No, you print the paper then mail it to yourself and don't open it (sweet law America ) Or you move to Australia and it's free! (you could use a google cache, or a wayback page to prove it's yours, not to mention you would have the .psd and they wouldn't!) Plus also the code is the same, meaning beyond a doubt they copied
No. The registration papers don't matter, unless there's no other proof of copyright. Wow. Okay, we're on shaky ground here, and I don't mean to imply that registration is not important. No legal advice given, but what rochow is suggesting is known as the "poor man's copyright," and, no, it doesn't hold up in a court of law, IMO. It has been presented as evidence unsuccessfully as far as I know. (poor man's copyright= seal it in an envelope and send it to yourself and never open the envelope.... it doesn't work). However, copyright has held up in court without registration. Stevie Wonder won a case where he produced studio recordings of a song from 1981 or 1982 that were never released. When Wonder's song was finally released on an album in the early nineties, another songwriter sued for infringement, citing a version he had registered with the copyright office a few years prior (late eighties, I think). Wonder had never registered the song with the copyright office, but produced a recording that had been made in 1981-2, and that was enough (enough of a "fixed form," a term that expensive lawyers will argue about until well after my death) to secure Stevie Wonder's case that he had not infringed on another writer's copyright, and the song was, indeed, his. Copyright infringement is notoriously difficult to prove, and the law as it applies to the internet has not been established. We are all walking on thin ice, unless we use clearly legally defined sources, like GNU. lol. A final note: it's a really good idea for US-based publishers to file any original material with the copyright office every year or so. "Fixed form" is the part of the law that keeps getting tripped up and reinterpreted. Server logs may do it, but it hasn't yet been proven. Registration costs about $45, takes 3-6 months to get the paperwork, and it doesn't matter how long the material is. You can register a thousand articles as a collection for one fee. But if you're concerned about this, then by all means, do it. It's cheap. copyright.gov (not an affiliate link ).