Registering the Copyright of a YouTube Video

Harry Of All Trades

Harry Of All Trades

Posting Mad!
Has anyone gone through the process of registering their copyright of a video with the US Copyright Office?

According to this article that I read (http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-say-my-blog-is-copyrighted-basics.html) if someone infringes on your copyright after you registered it, you can go after them for statutory damages and legal fees instead of just actual damages. $35 per registration can get steep pretty quick.

As I start making more money on YouTube, I think this would be a good avenue to take to protect my videos.

What are your thought on this?
 
I think since u r earning something from YouTube, you can put those earnings to protect ur videos, I think it is cool :)
 
I'm not sure how you're going to get statuary damages from a kid in Bangladesh who is ripping your videos.
 
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It's not worth it. In every modern country following the Berne convention, every work of art, video, sound or print is automatically copyrighted the moment it is made. Registering just gives you more ironclad proof and also could assist your case in collecting more damages since the infringer could not claim innocent ignorance. But then you gotta put that annoying little © beside everything you've copyrighted.
 
or you know you could just go the free route and just use that handy dandy report button when your videos ripped?
 
I think it is worthwhile to protect your trademarks and such, but not individual videos. So things like your logos, perhaps any unique items like series titles along with the context of the content under those titles, etc. are potentially worth filing something on, though admittedly it can often be a lot of work for nothing. Copyright doesn't require a filing in many cases as long as you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you did it first, and YouTube is a pretty good archive for that purpose with date stamps on everything.
 
Watermark your content, it helps. Look at my videos, I put a little logo in the empty spot left of the HUD so one knows where it came from.
 
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