Well, nobody ever said not to do that!

[Senegoid]

@engineer_comp_geek

As soon as you put something into a “fixed form” it is automatically copyrighted.

[ . . . ]

If you mail it to yourself and someone tries to “jump your claim”, it’s basically the same as if you wrote down your sheet music and just let it sit on a shelf. It’s not considered a legal method to establish date, and it’s not the equivalent of registering the copyright, so you are limited to actual damages.

@engineer_comp_geek

Nope. It’s too easily faked. For example. you could take an old envelope that wasn’t sealed properly, put your fake new claim inside, and seal it properly this time, making it appear that your item had been mailed years ago when it hadn’t.

From a legal point of view, all you have is the sheet music, which is exactly what you’d have if you hadn’t bothered mailing it.

@CookingWithGas

If you never published or distributed it in any way, you are not going to be able to prove the date you created the work. The courts won’t consider a postmarked envelope as evidence. IANAL.

So, in effect, having this “automatic copyright” merely by putting a work into “fixed form” is utter, totally, completely meaningless, useless, unenforceable, and just a pretty legal fiction.

And a court would not consider the condition of the envelope in weighing a copyright claim?

I did this once with a document I wrote. (It was an excerpt of a computer program I was working on.) I put it into a large brand new manila envelope and took that to the post office in person to mail it to myself. The clerk at the post office hand-stamped it with a postmark in five different places, right where the flap of the envelope was sealed, just like a king affixing his signet in wax to a royal document, and handed it back to me. There was no way that could have been tampered with, without being obvious?

Just how damn useless can this “automatic copyright” law be? And could our courts be any more impotent and worthless in cases like this?