Do we own our posts?

thepiggz@programming.dev to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 67 points –

Who owns what we post?

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The World Copyright Office then?

Oh wait, three seconds of googling suggests my posts are most likely covered when I post via my home instance in Australia.

"You don't need to register for copyright in Australia. The moment an idea or creative concept is documented on paper or electronically it is automatically protected by copyright in Australia. Copyright protection is free and automatic under the Copyright Act 1968."

The same applies here in NZ (although my instance is currently residing in AU)

That's what I said.

While copyright applies automatically

You can't enforce it without it being registered. Courts will reject any claim that is filled with unregistered copyright.

I think the problem is that you're not explaining which country you're thinking of, and seem to be suggesting it's the same legal situation everywhere

The concept of needing to register copyright does not exist in most countries. In many countries you just have it and you can enforce it.

Fediverse servers do exist outside of the USA so this is relevant for people who run those servers.

No, there is no need to register copyright in Australia.

That's only US courts. Other countries don't even have a procedure for registering copyrights.

How about you read the very first sentence of my little snippet again.

The very first sentence.

The sentence that says, "You don’t need to register for copyright in Australia."

You know, the sentence that effectively describes what needs to happen if you're thinking about registering copyright in Australia.

Perhaps in your country you have to register works for copyright so that the courts will recognise your claims of infringement. Other countries, maybe not so much.