Social media is a massive temptation to share our lives and our achievements with others. This is great and our friends and family probably love to see how great we are doing in our lives. However, if we are sharing our creations online then we should be careful to ensure that our ideas cannot be stolen. Of course copyrighting our work is essential, whether or not it is being shared online – and thankfully is not too difficult to do.
The Creation
Whatever you have created make sure that you create it on a format that can be saved and stored away. For example create a text document on your computer with the details on, or record your song onto MP3 and save this on your computer. It should be something that can be saved, shared and stored safely.
Using A Solicitor
If you want to use a solicitor to copyright your work then you should put a physical copy of it into an envelope and give it to them to take care of. You should have them draw up a contract which says that they are going to look after it for you. Both of you sign this, and you put it in a tamper proof container. This is very efficient but is probably the most costly way to copyright your work. If you need a local solicitor to help with this then a search online can help – IE a search on Google for ‘Manchester solicitors’.
Use An Online Service
If you can’t afford to go down this route then there are more cost effective online services that you can use. This is particularly good for music and video files. You simply sign up for an account on an Internet Based Registrar and upload your creation to their registrars service. You should get a certificate to show that you have done this. This is the cheapest method of protecting the copyright of your material, but you should do a little research and make sure you use a reliable service. The cost of this will depend on what service you use – you must have to pay per upload or you might be able to get a fixed price account, however don’t always assume that the cheapest option is the best.
This might seem like an extreme option, but it is far better to do this than to risk your work being taken without your consent. Actually both of these methods don’t take very long to arrange and implement at all, so it really is minimal effort to protect your work. At least once it is protected you can go about sharing it with whoever you want and even if you are lucky enough for your work to go viral you don’t have to worry about anyone poaching your ideas. So what are you waiting for, get online and look at all of your copyright material options now.
