Saturday, May 06, 2006

Poor Man's Copyright 2.0

Wikipedia defines the poor man's copyright (PMC) as "the method of using registered dating by the postal service or a notary public to date intellectual property, thereby helping to establish that the material has been in one's possession since a particular time."

There are many reasons while the PMC doesn't hold up in court but probably the most frequently cited reason is that it is too easy to fraud. You can send yourself an empty letter (unsealed envelope) and receive a postmark. Upon receipt or at a later date you can put anything inside the envelope and then seal it.

Numly can help but you need access to a computer with Internet access! Authors and artists can now upload their digital works to Numly and receive a registered Numly Number in exchange. Their digital works are date and time stamped in Numly's databases. The content is digitally fingerprinted for future reference and verification. Numly Numbers can be posted online along with the digital asset. The Numly Number serves as your copyright disclaimer and can be verified by anyone wiching to learn more about the author, publisher, copyright license, licensee, and timestamp. Viewership (including IP addresses) is also tracked for your reporting needs.

tags technorati :


esn 75510-060506-672234-46 Rate content:

© 2006 All Rights Reserved.