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[scorpioncbr]

Hello, I have a general question reagrding copyright. By what I understood of US copyright law, copyright is immediate upon creation of (...). The important factor is to establish a time stamp so there can be no doubt regarding when a certain drawing/sketch/work was created.

I have a few sketches which I intended to publish online on different websites(such as deviantart.com) My question is: If I publish said sketches scanning and uploading them to the website a date stamp would automatically appear stating when a given drawing was effectivly published, would that protect my work?

If i do not publish it, but just email the scanned drawing to myself a time stamp would appear showing when the email was sent/received, would my work be protected in such a case?

The digitalized version of the drawing would prove that the original on pencil/paper/canvas (at the very latest) existed on the date in which it was emailed/uploaded, so if anyone downloads/copies the drawing claiming it as their own for monetary gain would I have any rights being able to prove that whenever he 'copyrights' said drawing with you or at the library of congress or through any other means it was already copywritten (as it existed before he registered it)?

(P.S. I'm asking because I live in Italy and the deviant art server should be located on US soil)

I thank you for all of your time,

Best regards

Alessandro Sironi

[Zonath]

Registration of your copyrights would be the surest way of establishing the time and date of creation, assuming such a thing is all that important.  The problem with simply using scans or email to establish time and date of creation is that the metadata on those files can be very easily manipulated (assuming one knows how) in order to back-date a particular piece, so the existence of those dates may not be all that persuasive in court if the time and date of creation become material to your case.   Your ideas seem like they'd just be an updated version of the 'poor man's copyright' method of mailing a copy of your work to yourself and leaving it unopened, which the US Copyright Office gives the official position of discouraging:( http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html ) and they're likely to carry about the same amount of weight in court (i.e. little).

In addition, if you're set on protecting your work, then registering the work is going to provide you with the highest level of protection, since registration prior to infringement carries with it a higher level of statutory damages and the possibility of recovering attorney fees.