When Posting Original Works Online

 When we write something new or have a great idea for a story, we want to share it with the world!

However, "Terms of Use" website agreements are contracts between you--the author--and the company that runs and/or owns the website.

The contract covers many issues, but most important to an author are the areas concerning:

The rights you retain to your original work when you publish on the site

The rights you may be posting away.

When we share online with the world, we must realize that we may be posting away our rights to control the use of the content of the posted article, poem, book-in-progress, screenplay, software, song, app or other of our intellectual property. Be cautious when you post, especially before posting your ideas.

Posting ideas is significantly problematic because there is NO instrument to protect ideas, except silence. Until the idea is developed into an actual creative work, the idea is NOT eligible for protection. If you post one of the thousands of ideas wandering randomly in your imagination, everyone in the universe with an Internet connection has access to your idea for free and you can't prove it was your idea and not theirs. And even if you can prove it was your idea, you can't protect an idea whose only residence is inside your head.

An actual creative work begins as an idea, which you then develop. Once you have developed the idea, you can create a physical form of the idea and render the physical form of your idea on paper, recording or other medium. At the point of rendition, your original idea acquires the legal status of a creative work and is automatically protected under international law. Yes, the moment you render your creation, the creation needs no formal certification or registration in order to have protection. To protect your actual creative work, the physical form or rendition of your work is not required to be a publication or complicated production, simply a representation of the creation in physical form. This rendition elevates your idea to a literary, artistic, musical or other work and, therefore, garners legal protection.

In 1886, the signatory nations of the Berne (Switzerland) Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works signed an international agreement establishing that at the point of creation, creative work (on paper, other medium in a tangible format), becomes intellectual property, which allows the work's creator to claim appropriate form of ownership, which permits the work's creator to:

Gain worldwide protection of intellectual property rights

Control who can use the intellectual property

Control how intellectual property is used

Be credited when intellectual property is used

Monetize intellectual property

License intellectual property for duplication, distribution and sale

Transfer intellectual property rights to other entities

Leave intellectual property to heirs

And other benefits

Proof of intellectual property ownership, however, may take more than scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin, especially if you are required to go before a judge and make a claim of ownership.

Proving you own the creation will be difficult or almost impossible without official certification issued by your home nation's Office of Copyrights. Courts and tribunals worldwide tend to look more favorably upon claimants who possess legal documentation than claimants whose rendition is documented in the form of sticky-note doodles, out-of-tune humming on a cell phone or an unopened envelop with your literary deposit mailed to yourself. But if doodles, humming and postal deposits are all you can offer the judge to prove you own the material, I wish you well.

Being able to present official documentation will go a long way to support your claim of ownership. All participating nations adhere to the Berne agreement of automatic protection at the point of creation, but participating nations also maintain their own national frameworks and official procedures for registering creative works. Although it is not a requirement, an official document proving your ownership of the intellectual property will help substantiate your claim against a thief or tech-savvy website's slick click "Terms of Use" box enticement to use their site for free. But is free really free?

Authors, editors, journalists, book and prod