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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
The thing is, most things do get registered once they are in a position to be released to the public.
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No, most things that the creator intends to exploit commercially are registered before that release. Youtube vids of high-school garage bands practicing their original songs are not registered. Blog posts are not registered. Character descriptions for roleplaying games are not registered. Tweets.... I'm waiting for the first lawsuit trying to prosecute someone for reposting twitter posts without the author's permission. (Posting grants the site permission to copy the post; they need that to copy it to other servers. It doesn't grant third parties the right to copy it onto other websites, or into a book.)
Is each twitter post a separate copyrighted work? (Why not; a single haiku can be a copyrighted work.)
Works created with commercial use in mind are often registered; works created for other reasons generally are not. This has always been true... professional photographers often registered a collection of works, but "pictures of 1972 high school graduation" generally weren't. If later it's discovered that a celebrity was in that class, the photographer may be untraceable.
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Anyone who does anything through an agent or publisher is likely going to get their work registered at some point prior to release. All of these registrations and subsequent renewals are public record.
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US copyright registration, standard version (not the extra-$500-expedited version) has an 18+ month backlog, and it's growing; they don't have enough resources to deal with the submissions faster than they're coming in.