Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
I can live with that, but you're still getting a free lottery ticket for 20 years. Patent doesn't, you have to pay thousands upfront, with no guaranteed it's worth anything. And trademarks actually has to be used before you can get a Trademark, just the opposite of copyright.
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If there's no free protection before formal registration (I could see a return to requiring a notice of copyright, although I don't expect it), showing a draft version of a novel to a publisher becomes very problematic. Does a photographer copyright every picture before submitting a selection to a magazine? Does a short-story author copyright her stories before submitting them? That would slow down publication *a lot*, if there's no protection before the formal registration. If lyrics & music had to be registered in order to protect them from being grabbed without permission, bands couldn't send in demo tapes.
Right now, things are protected before official registration, so that the magazine can't just steal submissions from the slushpile and publish them without paying. The free lottery ticket is considered reasonable exchange for value--society gets some access to unfinished works, with limited rights, in order to encourage them to be finished and widely published.