My apologies if there is already a thread on this and I did not find it....

I really want to post my own material here in the way of poetry and music but I am afraid people will steal my ideas.......

Any one here have suggestions on an inexpensive and reliable way I can copy write my material before posting it on this here wonderful DMT forum????


Thanks!!

One person's theft is another's inspiration.

Are you trying to sell this material? If not, why be concerned people here are out to rip you off? There are many on the DMT-Nexus who openly share ideas, music and poetry without consideration of theft.

I suppose if you need to protect the material, you could lock a PDF output. I could, however, print & scan a copy pretty easily. You can also encrypt a compressed archive and hand out the key -- but there are ways around that, too.

As for the music, iTunes maybe?

Old school method : registered mail to yourself, unopened, date clearly visible... (or publish it FIRST!) However, once it's out there, there is really no controlling it. I only post stuff that I don't mind being ripped off (or re-appropriated, depending on your point of view )

JBArk

Indeed unless you're trying to sell your stuff, copyrighting doesn't really make sense. And anyway I've noticed there's a very "open source" spirit here in the nexus, which is wonderful.

But if you really need to do it, then here's some thoughts. The thing about piracy in general is that it'll never go away. Stuff like music and movies are just vibrations in the air, and there will always be ways to capture these vibrations. The only thing that you can do is leave out data from the material or watermark it or make it very bad quality (thus leaving out data). But eventually when you'll start selling the material in whole, someone who will want to copy it, will find a way for it, no matter what.

So in your case you could just share parts of the songs and poems, or watermark them with little bleeps in the middle.

I am person who has dealt with piracy my whole career. I publish and sell educational books (at great expense, both time and money wise) and then almost immediately find the material being offered as a PDF for five bucks. Hard to compete with that.

But I still make a living, and the only alternative is to not publish. Not an option in my opinion. So instead, my approach is to get the stuff out there far and wide, get the name recognition. I'm not super worried about always getting paid- that's a road to madness- and instead just try to get credit for my hard work.

It's unlikely that anyone will try stealing your poetry to make money from. It's not that kind of art form. If it's good, people will want to quote it, though. If your name is attached at the bottom, that usually will be included in the quote. That way you get credit. And since you are preparing to share your art with us, you must be at least somewhat interested in your work getting out there.

Which brings up the anonymity thing. I'm a psychedelic artist, I want people to see my art, so it's silly even trying to retain anonymity. I gave my real name in my introductory essay, and my URL is in my profile. But my words are in old magazine articles talking about shrooms- I've never hidden this fact about myself and there's really no turning back now. But you may feel differently. It would be hard to both get credit in the larger world and stay hermetically anonymous in here. Unless you don't mind getting credit under your Nexus name in the larger world.

In any case, I hope you overcome your reservations, and share your art. It's good for you!

Not trying to be an artistic scrooge here but...

Speaking strictly as a desperately impoverished starving artist/musician type individual...
I could think of few thing more heartbreaking than watching helplessly as some one else makes money or sucess from one of my ideas...

I can just imagine hearing some of my lyricks in some horrible pop song one day..

I already had a few "fellow musicians" steal some of my best lyriks, riffs and concepts and since these people were better of financially than me they were easily able to use them to perform live in front of audiences and such.....

and that just burns me up.

That's why you need to publish it in a way that gives you credit. On a poetry website or something. That way you will have dated documentation that you posted it before anyone else.

That old-school thing with mailing it to yourself- that works too. If you ever end up in court trying to defend your intellectual property, a sealed postmarked envelope containing a copy is considered legal evidence. Only costs you a stamp.

The other thing is enforcement. The reason I let most violations of my work slide is that it's cost prohibitive to enforce. I routinely have bootlegged material removed from YouTube, eBay etc. and am able to keep it to a minimum. But if someone used my art on an album cover and released a hit song, then it starts being worth it to take it to court.

Get credit for your work! That is the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself. Hiding your art and never showing it will protect you, but why even bother making it?

Thank you everyone for the advice and comments.

and thanks most of all to Guyomech for your helpful answers..

Much Appreciation !

I will work on sharing something with the Nexus in the near future