Three days ago, March 4, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that creators must wait until they have a registered copyright before they can sue for copyright theft.
In short, this means that your work is not copyrighted the moment you create it. Nor will it be considered copyrighted if you have applied for a copyright registration. Instead, it will not be copyrighted until you have actually received the notice of registration of your copyright.
This means that even if you slap that little "©" symbol on your work with a date, it doesn’t count.
Things you (& I) have written in a blog? Can now be used by any publication without consent or compensation.
Unless you have the money to register each and every little thing you write in your blog.
My advice to authors: register any work you intend on selling before you release it into the wild. Second, it would be best not to write massive, content-filling missives in your blogs, unless you want it to appear in someone else’s online magazine where they are making money that you won’t be from your work.
I do wonder how this is going to effect news media. The way I see it, unless the Supreme Court allows for blanket registration of a website, then any article that is put online can be poached for free. Because by the interpretation I see, unless that article is specifically registered, then the author/publisher of said piece cannot sue for infringement unless that article was already registered.
