Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Nope. In any country which is a signatory to the Berne Convention, copyright exists automatically the moment the work is created. No “government ownership record” is needed.
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Just try to take a copyright violation to court in the US without having registered the copyright with the library of congress.
In the US you
1) have to register the copyright to file the claim in the court system. No registration then no filing of an infringement claim.
2) If the filing occurs after the infringement you can only claim actual damages rather than statutory damages. That means you have to prove actual damages.
This is not how most other countries interpret the Berne convention. Also, the Berne copyright period of life+X only apply for works first published after 1977. Anything published before that have periods set by the laws that were in effect before 1977 as modified by later extensions. None of which are life+X. That's why everything published in 1923 just had its copyright expire n the US regardless of the death date of the author.
Greg