A Bit of Copyright Law for the Confused Writer

Alright. Copyright law is something that many artists do not give much thought to, particularly the unpublished variety. Here you will find nearly everything you need to know on the subject as it pertains to being published in a collaborative work. I will also address the copyright agreement that you will enter into if you are published in Halicarnassus. I also use the words author, writer, and artist interchangeably as the copyright laws are the same.

1. Copyright law for the artist:

Once you create something--an expression of an idea in an original form--you immediately own all copyrights to the work. When a photographer's shutter clicks, or a writer's file is saved to his hard drive, instant copyright happens (in the US). The only problem is proving your rights.

There are several ways to accomplish this. The most common way is by electronic signature--saving a file to a hard drive so that the computer assigns the date and time of the files' creation. This is usually sufficient, legal copyright evidence for the small, mid- to low-list author (or any other type of artist). The second method is called a "poor man's copyright", and simply involves mailing a copy of the work to yourself and leaving the parcel unopened. This works fine as well, and consistently holds up in court.

The third option is simply to send your work to the US Copyright Office along with a non-refundable payment. This is the surest way to secure a work's authorship, but is usually unnecessary for the small-time artist.

2. Copyright law for the artist as it pertains to a lit-mag:

When an author and a publisher come into the sacred union of a collaborative work, i.e. a literary magazine, both parties get certain rights. The author still retains the actual copyright(s) to his work(s), but the publisher gets the right to publish the work. All this means, is that the publisher owns the right to the magazine as a whole, and the content within as it is arranged. The publisher can edit, reprint, and reissue with complete legal freedom, but can not use the author's piece for any other purposes.

The author's initial copyrights only change in the respect that the published piece, if it is to be published at another time, must recognize the first publisher in print. For example, if your poem were to be printed in Halicarnassus and afterwards you wanted to publish a collection of poetry--including that poem--you would need to recognize that it was originally published in Halicarnassus Literary Review.

Also, when a piece is currently being published in a collaborative effort, it usually cannot be simultaneously printed in another publication. This is a clause that most magazines have, and it allows them full publishing rights for a certain period of time. At Halicarnassus, the agreement is that a published piece may not be reprinted elsewhere within a period of one year from the date of publication.

You're probably bored to death at this point, but knowing how to cover your ass is good.

For more information, go to www.copyright.gov.