> Don't worry too much about copyrighting your stuff--and
> it's "copyright," BTW, but no sweat because I used to make
> that mistake all the time. Theft of creative content isn't
> nearly as prevalent as you may suspect.
Oh yes it is, lol! But mainly only in the online world. It seems to be a common misconception that if a story, poem, song, art, etc, is posted on a public or semi-public website, it is fair game. That isn't the case, as several people who ripped stories off a site I've belonged to for years found out.
Let's say you find a story you really like on a blog somewhere, and you copy/paste it to your site. You just got yoursef in trouble, because you committed a copyright infringement. The Author of any original work owns the copyright from the moment they write the piece, and can actually get a judgment against you to charge you for use of their work. My standard, lawyer-drafted email basically reads (there's a great deal more legalese and such): "By using this work, you have agreed to pay $1000USD for a one time non-exclusive electronic publishing right, payable immediately after the work is posted to your site."
I've never had a probem with it, especially once they realize that it IS enforceable- thanks to this nifty thing called a copyright statement at the top of anything I publish online and on any page I create.
Okay, completely random thingymabobber: anyone know how to transfer something from a MSWord document into a read-only PDF?
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