Copywriting Screenplays

In an earlier post Caroline said the following:
Okay. Things your mother and a LOT of screenwriting gurus never told you. The ONLY thing WGA registration does for you (while it does a lot for the guild, monetarily) is that IF* your work is plagiarized, and *IF the trial is held in the L.A. environs, they will send a guild courier to court with your sealed (electronically or physically) script to present to the court on your behalf.U.S. Copyright registration (Performing Arts form) will protect your work for the very long duration of copyright, which will exceed your lifetime. It also adds the very worthwhile benefit of providing you, should your work be plagiarized, with rights to punitive damages and lots of good stuff. By law, you work is "copyright" the minute you commit it to paper, but to have FULL copyright benefits in a court of law, the writer must have shown enough interest in protecting his work to have registered his copyright.

Then if someone steals your work (and it's one hell of a lottery ticket, so pray they do!) you can mop the floor with the bastards! If your copyright isn't registered, you can still win your plagiarism suit, but all you will be able to collect is costs for materials and time while the perpetrator pockets potential millions from the sales. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with a BIG cannon!
If you are a screemwroter who lives beyond the territories of the United States, and Hollywood is your intended target market, register your ccpyright with the U.S. Copyright office. You will have the same protection as if you live in Los Angeles right next door to a studio!

Here is the URL to download the forms:
http://www.copyright.gov/register/performing.html And here's some information you can only get by calling the copyright office and talking to a real live person. Use my dime for your benefit. When you mail in your copyright application, register or certify the package so that you get a time-stamped and signed postcard in return showing the date your work reached their office and was accepted. KEEP IT IN A SAFE PLACE!!! The post card will be your date of registration. If you don't do this, then the date of registration, by default, will be the date your work is certified, which may be weeks or even months after they recieve it.

If you register your copyright with the Copyright Office, you have no need for WGA registration. But it does give newbies a case of the warm fuzzies for having their work stored in a basket in a WGA warehouse... Once upon a time, I did it too. '-)
Caroline

I think this deserved its own thread and would be interesting to all aspiring screenwriters. I would certainly like to know how to protect my work. And I just think it's a good topic for a screenwriting newsgroup. :-)