Legal Copyright
Copyright Protection is a special case of proof of Document Origin.
In general, no specific action has to be taken by an author to "claim" copyright. If you created the work, you own the copyright. Period. However, should someone come along and steal or plagiarise your work, and they then publish and claim the copyright on their version of your work, you are unprotected. Unless, that is, you can prove to the rest of the world that you have a prior claim.
Codel provides that proof. Furthermore, we believe that our methods offer substantial advantages over, for example, registration with the Library of Congress (in the USA).
- We are cheaper. For non-commercial registration, the service is free of charge.
- We are globally accessible. The logic of our Protected Audit Trail knows and needs no international boundaries.
- The author can choose not to publish and still retain full protection - you only need to reveal registration if a dispute arises.
- Codel registration is far simpler
However, we are limited to digital work - ie works which exist in a digital form; music, images and documents. Why? because our entire logic is based on protection of hash values and we can only create hashes of digital data.
Does that mean we can't protect work that was not created digitally? No.
It means that you have to capture the work in digital form for us to be able to protect it. Paintings and sculptures are good examples. However good you may think image creation or manipulation software is, as artistic packages, they still can't manage oil on canvas or solid 3d objects, so how does Codel protect an artist of the "dirty hands" variety?
Easiest answer, take a few high resolution digital photographs of the work. Ensure that the photographs capture any and all features you regard as unique to your work. Record the hashes of the photos in a text document. Register the hash of the text document with Codel.
Warning: Make sure you KEEP THE PHOTOS in exactly the state you first "hashed" them or the protection is useless. You MUST be able to recreate the original hashes in any subsequent dispute. Suggestion: in addition to any other digital precautions you take to safeguard your data, burn the images and the registered text document onto a CD. Test the CD data - using the Codel software to make sure it recreates the hashes faithfully. Mark the CD and put it in a safe place. Now they can't get accidentally altered or deleted.
Except for the burning of the data onto a CD, the Codel Document Protection Software can handle all of the above for you.
For general advice and background on Copyright issues, we recommend the following:
Previous page: Legal
Next page: Anti-Counterfeiting Legal Action