Does poor man’s copyright work?

Have you ever heard of poor man’s copyright? It’s a simple copyright ‘hack’ avoiding large copyright costs. We can create something and post it to our self’s via snail mail. The postal service postmark our package or envelope is proof we own copyright for our creation. As long as you open the letter in court in front of witnesses, of course. But does poor man’s copyright work?

Why poor man’s copyright doesn’t work

Simply, there is no way to prove who or when work is placed into the envelope. With no independent evidence, in court, we only have your word about who stuffed the envelope at the time of posting.

• Envelopes inherently lose their stickiness, so we can’t prove we have not tampered with the envelope.
• No proof who posted or stuffed the envelope
• Fake postage could be an issue
• Send a poorly sealed envelope, get a postage mark and stuff it at a later date

No protection

Poor man’s copyright provides no protection for fire, floods, children and natural disasters that can damage paper.

Does poor man’s copyright work?

Sending a letter to yourself can help, but I can’t find any proof it’s been successful. There are only 3 references to it in US cases. The UK national government intellectual property office (Web Archive) recommended this form of copyright. Sadly, no longer.

With a real world official copyright, you gain rights to sue anyone who infringes it. In many countries they limit us in what you can sue for, no copyright equals less money than if you had copyright.

What rights do you have?

In the US, as soon as you create something you own the copyright. It’s your job to prove it. The UK is similar and poor man’s copyright can help, but it doesn’t prove you created something, it just proves you held it in your possession at the time of posting. In both the UK & US it holds some evidential weight, but not a lot.

Both countries use a copyright system called the Berne Convention for literary, music, and art. This international treaty applies the same basic protections to any work the moment we create it and in any country. For example, as soon as I wrote this article it we gained copyright in the UK (Its place of origin), the US, Italy, Nepal, Kuwait, and Spain (See a full list of countries in the Berne Convention)

You don’t even need to use “Copyright 2016” or remember any keyboard shortcuts for ©

System	Shortcut for ©
Windows	Alt + 0169
Mac	Alt-G
HTML	© or ©

Alternatives to poor man’s copyright (That don’t work)

Dates on computer files – another one that doesn’t work, just change the date on your computer and create a file. Its creation date will be the date you set.

Emailing yourself – This is a modern day poor man’s copyright and hold just as much weight as the original.

Conclusion

In simple poor mans copyright doesn’t work, its a urban myth. the Berne Convection gives us some protection but it will always be he said she said in any court. Our best and only option for complete peace of mind is to register and pay government copyright fees.