Why Bother to Register?
The first question most magazine writers ask regarding copyright is this: “If the articles that I write are automatically protected by copyright from the minute that I create them, then why should I bother to fill out forms and pay the government a fee to actually register my work?”
The short answer is that if you don't want to, you don't have to. Your work will still be protected to a large extent. The longer answer is that if you take the time to register your work, you will enjoy additional legal and possibly financial advantages in the years to come, whether your copyright is ever violated or not.
Your Rights to Sell
As you learned in Chapter 8, when you give a magazine the right to publish your work, you are essentially loaning them the use of your copyright. This is why copyright is most important to magazine writers — it allows you to earn a profit from the words that you put down on the page. There are other things that a copyright allows you to do, though, and as time goes by you may find it important to have legally nailed these things down:
To translate your work into a foreign language
To convert your work for another use (such as using an article as the basis for a motion picture)
To prepare a derivative work, such as incorporating your article into an anthology
Again, copyright is not an end-all, be-all, but the protections it does provide are essential to helping you to earn a living as a magazine writer. After you create a work, you own it for a certain amount of time before it goes into the public domain. This is, quite frankly, your time to use what you've created to earn a buck, and to allow your heirs to continue collecting until the copyright runs out. Making sure you have protected all your options, including the option to defend yourself fully against copyright infringements and to demand appropriate compensation, is a valuable tool in continuing your own personal magazine-writing business.
Your Rights to Sue
If someone violates your copyright, you can file an injunction or a lawsuit whether you have registered your copyright or not. Your failure to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office does not, in any way, take away your right to pursue legal action against a violator.
However, if you took the time to register your copyright within ninety days of publication, or at least before the copyright infringement occurred, you can qualify for statutory damages in addition to actual damages. This makes it much more likely that you will actually be financially compensated for the theft of your copyrighted work. In some instances it makes it more likely that an attorney will agree to take on your case in the first place.
Proving actual damages — the amount of money lost by a violation of your copyright — is a difficult task. This is why you want to register your copyrighted work. If you do, then you will be eligible for statutory damages, which require proof only that your copyright has been violated, not that you have actually lost future income.
Statutory damages can range from $750 to $30,000 per copyright infringement, and they can go into the low six figures if a judge rules that someone willfully violated your copyright (that is, that the person didn't make an honest mistake but instead simply ignored your copyright symbol or statement of “all rights reserved”).
Again, statutory damages are available
All of the above should make it clear to you that if you take the business of magazine writing seriously, then you should protect yourself by registering your articles' copyrights. The good news is that the process is relatively simple. You can, in most cases, find everything you need online.
