FALSE CLAIM: You have to Actually Register your Copyright for it to be legal.

So yesterday Kalinex made the statement that you can’t hold “copyright” on something unless you register it.

Link to the A3 Discord conversation:

Not to pick on Kalinex, This is completely untrue and its something that quite a few people still believe.

This can be proven out by a quick google search:

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#:~:text=No.,infringement%20of%20a%20U.S.%20work.

But having said that I get where the confusion comes from.  In the US legal system Copyright (Please note the term) legislation and court cases are linked to financial loses. 

This is not the case world wide but we’ll stay in the US for the moment. 

There is a "Financial impact/loss" threshold before a case may be considered for Copyright cases to be heard.  And it varies State to state from what I’ve read.  In some cases its $200 in others $2500.  US Federal and State Law varies so much I simply do not have the time to sit and research each variation.  If you want to know more you will have to google the State’s legislation on Copyright.

The reason for this is to remove or at least reduce the possibility/frequency of nuisance or frivolous law suits.  The US being very litigious (i.e. they like suing each other) the court system would be overwhelmed easily with these cases. By adding a threshold for consideration and making the penalties quite high it adds a filter to the process.

But that does not mean you are not legally protected under that certain value Whatever it is…

This where “Moral Rights“ comes in.

“In the United States, the term "moral rights" typically refers to the right of an author to prevent revision, alteration, or distortion of her work, regardless of who owns the work.”

https://cyber.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html

Copyright is often used as a catch all term.  It really is far more complicated than that.  Copyright is in of itself a subset of the “Copyright” laws. Together with Trademarks, Patents, Copyright and Moral Rights.  The proper modern term is Intellectual Property or IP.   There is legislation covering all of these topics.  But the terms often get misused.

Ownership and Moral Rights applications can get deeply complicated if the work passes through multiple hands and is a derivative of someone else’s work.  But let’s stay simple for this example.

I create my model of our hypothetical 2001 Toyota Corolla.

You take my model and make a derivative of it. In contravention of my NO-Derivatives licence.

Do you own your derivative work or do I own it?

Well, the answer is…

You own your work and I own mine.  But you only own the ‘work’ you made and my Moral Rights do not allow you to modify my work so you must remove all of my work.

You have no claim on my original model or the parts of the model you took and modified.

This stands as established International Law irrespective of the “Financial Impact”. So even if you do not financially profit from my model you cannot just do what you like with it.  My model is protected under International Copyright Law as well as US Law.  And my Moral Right to be recognised as the author and set terms for its use and recognised by US, EU, AU, UK and International Law.

The worldwide Status.

The principles of Copyright and the application of Moral Rights (Which falls under the wider umbrella of IP and Copyright) across most of the world were established under the Berne Convention.  Something that has been revised and updated over the years.

Bottom line, the exact application of the laws, penalties and conditions may vary but the existence of the law and what it actually means is actually quite consistent across 90% of the world.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
https://cyber.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#:~:text=No.,infringement%20of%20a%20U.S.%20work.