Copyright (c)

Just read a tweet where @placidsheep is furious because someone has passed off his photography on the internet as their own.


Unfortunately, that's all too easily done. The process for protecting your copyright can be convoluted and expensive. A quick and simple method is to embed a hidden watermark or message in a picture.


I had some of my digital music pinched 15 or so years ago. 


Doubtless what follows is much more complex now.


Fortunately, as I understood the format and structure of the medium, I had embedded copyright  notices in it at various places. The people who pinched it knew only the basics, and changed my copyright in one place.


I'd had the foresight to make multiple copies, and when I'd accumulated a few tunes I saved them off, made paper copies of the digital and sheet music, wrote details of where and how the copyright notice was embedded, slapped it all in a security sealed envelope, and with a bit of faffing about with my solicitor, paid £45 for it to be saved with them for perpetuity.


I very much doubt you could get a deal like that nowadays. My solicitors weren't very switched on to copyright then. They sure are now :) 


When the music was pinched and used on a commercial CD I made a polite request for it to be removed or that they pay royalties. I was ignored. £20 got me solicitors letters to the thieves and and their publishers. The music company withdrew the CD, leaving the tea-leafs with a hefty bill from that company.


So what did my £65 (£109.85 today with inflation) get me? Peace of mind.


I never released them commercially. Instead I released the two most popular tunes as public domain out of pure bloody mindedness, still with embedded credit, with a polite request that if anyone wants to use them, please ask. They were re-released in 2005 under the Creative Commons licence. Guess they're still out there as Public domain too :)


I was pleased to reach an agreement with a major charity to use one of the tunes under licence for them to benefit from resale if they wanted, and receive any tax benefits.


I'd call that a moral victory. Everything comes to those who wait....