Hey Fir!! I'm working on an IF at the moment, and after your recent post about copyright, I wanted to ask a possibly naïve question- how does one gain copyright (especially for IFs)? Do they simply declare it, or is there a process?
Hope you don't mind this somewhat silly question!
It’s not silly at all! I think it’s good to be informed. I can only speak to U.S copyright laws, though. I’d encourage you to look up your own country’s laws if different.
As the creator of an original work, you automatically own the copyright to that work as soon as you publish it in a tangible form—this includes digital. This grants you control over how your work is used and monetized. So basically, as soon as you publish it on a website like itch, it’s automatically copyrighted.
However, I’d recommend going one step further and using copyright notices (e.g., © [Year] [Your Name]) on your work. This establishes your intent to copyright, which will help if you ever have to prove you own the copyright. It’s also advisable to maintain records of your creative process (drafts, notes, publication dates, etc).
I’d also encourage you to make a statement as I did here outlining what’s permissible and don’t deviate from it. As soon as you deviate from your own rules, you allow anyone to point to that exception and declare it as precedent.
As far as officially registering a copyright, I don’t think you can do so with IFs that are still a wip. I’m not sure of the details myself, but in speaking to other authors, I think you can only register copyrights of completed works. So once the IF is complete, you can register the copyright with the U.S Copyright Office. But even not registered, your copyright protection is still valid.
In the U.S, there’s something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which basically allows copyright owners to inform online service providers about infringing material so it can be taken down. If you find your content on a pirate website, you can report it to Google and they will block the site or remove it from searches. Here is the report form. I’ve had to do this with both Viatica and Cantata already and they were successfully removed.
Is this ironclad protection against copyright infringement? Unfortunately, no, as we’ve already seen in my case. Piracy and plagiarism happens all the time and will continue to happen—I’m not naive about that. A copyright statement can’t keep your work from getting stolen. What it does is give you the means and ammunition should you ever have to fight to prove your ownership of the creative content. That’s the main thing to remember.
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