How To Use MyFreeCopyRight

The copyright services MyFreeCopyright offers are not official and may, or may not, help you in a court room. With that said I do think there are still several other benefits to using this free service.

Most of us can't afford to file an official copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office for every picture, blog post and article we post online. This would be very expensive. How much of your content earns you any decent money? Maybe 1 in 10 items that you create is my bet. Another problem you never know which piece of content is worth the added expense up front. Initial filing costs range between $35 and $50 depending upon method used. U.S. Copyright law states that original content that is published is automatically copyrighted. This applies to "literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture" published online. By officially registering your content you gain the advantage of being able to sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees. For more information on U.S. copyright law go read the FAQ.

Benefits Of Using MyFreeCopyright.com services

• One major factor in proving your content is the original, and not a copy, is being able to prove date of publication. It stands to reason that the first person to publish content online is most likely the original owner, but this may not always be the case. MFC automatically records the date and time when you submit your new article. This is done in an effort to prove the original date of publication. If someone was to try and register your content as their own this could be considered fraud.
• MyFreeCopyRight creates a digital fingerprint of your content using a hash function . Every piece of content registered with MFC will have a unique digital fingerprint.
• When you use MyFreeCopyRight to protect a Web Page, Blog entry or other text it saves the full text of the web page automatically. I feel this aspect could also be very helpful in a copyright infringement dispute.
• You can link to the electronic record for your content on MyFreeCopyRight.com to show would be thieves that you understand copyright law and have taken proactive measures to protect your content. In my opinion this is one of the best uses for MFC. So many users online think everything on the internet is free for the taking, or that they will never get caught. By using this free service you are both educating and discouraging thieves with a simple link. Enforcing your copyright can be time consuming if you do this on your own, with no direct monetary gain to be had. So anything that discourages copyright infringement is worthwhile in my opinion.
• MyFreeCopyRight is an independent 3rd part that is providing an unofficial Non-Repudiation service. Weather or not a court of law or someone like Google would recognize and accept this as evidence in a DMCA claim I'm not sure about. Any evidence is better than none though, right?
• Once you setup an account it only takes a few minutes to register new content with MFC. If you have a blog or other content that is broadcast via a RSS feed, then you can use that to automatically add your new content to MyFreeCopyRight as well.
• You can protect images, photos, lyrics, music, poems, articles and any web page including or HTML code using MyFreeCopyRight.

Negative Aspects of using MyFreeCopyRight

• This service isn't official like spending money to register your content with the U.S. Copright office would be. I'm not sure how much it would help in a DMCA dispute or court case to try and use MFC collected data as evidence.
• Every single change on your content will cause the fingerprint to differ. Each and every comment, or your content changing due to the use of a RSS Feed to keep your web page fresh with new content, further changes the live content from the original hashed fingerprint that was saved. The only way I see to update your content's saved information on MyFreeCopyRight.com is to delete it and re add it again which will create a new date and time of publication. For this reason I don't worry about my content differing from the digital fingerprint as the full text was also saved. As long as the live content is pretty similar to the saved text I don't see that it matters. The U.S. Copyright Office doesn't require a person to reregister content for minor changes.

To protect a Web Page, Blog Entry, Poem, Song Lyrics or other written content

1. Register at MyFreeCopyRight.com and verify your account.
2. Create your web page or hub and leave space for a small image and two lines of text below it.
3. Once the content is published immediately go to MyFreeCopyRight.com
4. Up top click on "My Copyrights"
5. Click on "Protect My Content"
6. Click on "Web Page"
7. Enter the URL to your web page, blog entry, hub or lens.
8. Click on "Protect"
9. On the next page click where it says "Would you like to use a Creative Commons license?" if you wish to license your content under one of the creative commons license. By default a standard copyright is applied.
10. On the next page you should see a small MyFreeCopyRight logo with your contents unique MCN number below it. Just below that you should see a text box with HTML code within it. Copy all of the HTML code there and go to your web page or blog and paste it in. If you don't see this code for whatever reason then go to step 11 to locate your contents information. Otherwise skip steps #11 - #15
11. Up top click on "My Copyrights"
12. About the middle of the page just below where it says "Your Username's Registered and Protected" click on "Web Pages"
13. Locate your newest entry, you may have to use the pagination navigation below, and click on the entry.
14. Copy the HTML code from the text box.
15. Paste the HTML code into your web page or blog.
16. You will receive an E-Mail with your contents MyFreeCopyRight information, save it in case it is latter needed.

Special Instructions for HubPages.com users

You will not be able to use the HTML code as given. We are not allowed to create links from images. Instead do this as it is the next best thing in my opinion.

1. After you save the HTML code also save a copy of the small MyFreeCopyRight logo to later upload to a photo capsule. Typically you right click and "save image as" in most browsers, or something similar.
2. Upload the MFC logo to a photo capsule and set size to 1/4, otherwise it will become pixelated if it is displayed larger. I find that setting the display size to 1/4 works best.
3. Place a text capsule just below the photo capsule. I use some text like: 1st line: ©Anthony Goodley 2010 All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
   2nd line: MyFreeCopyRight.com Registered And Protected. If you know how to use HTML code then click where it says "HTML" and add a <br> tag to tidy it all up so you don't have the big space between the lines. Or you could copy / paste the text from mine to get the right code then in the HubPages HTML editor just change the name and MCN number in the link parts.
4. You could stop here but I strongly feel it is best to create a hyperlink to show would be thieves your content is really protected to discourage them.
5. Left click with your mouse and highlight the words "MyFreeCopyRight Registered And Protected". Then click on the chain icon to create a link from this anchor text.
6. Extract the URL portion from the HTML code. The part You need here is in bold: <a href='http://www.myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/WD12L_6Y3XS_J81DF' title='MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected'><img src='http://storage.myfreecopyright.com/mfc_protected.png' alt='MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected' title='Copyright Protected' width='145px' height='38px' border='0'/></a>
7. In the new popup paste in just the URL portion of the HTML code from the last step that is similar to this (Your MCN number, the underlined part of the URL, will be different) to the "Link URL" line:http://www.myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/WD12L_6Y3XS_J81DF Optional:I prefer to also go to the advanced settings and force the link to open in a new tab or window.
8. Save and your all done.

Ok this method is really simple to use, It works automatically once you enter the RSS Feed's URL one time. The downside is that it doesn't save a complete copy of the text, just the Meta Description Tag. For HubPage users this would be what most of you know as the "Summary Text"

1. From the home page up top click on "My Copyrights"
2. Click on "Protect My Creation"
3. Next click on "Blog / Podcast"
4. In the "Site Feed URL" box enter the URL to your RSS feed.
5. Your all done!

Special Instructions for HubPages.com users

I'm sure many of you are wondering where do you get this RSS feed from, am I right? It is quite simple. Just go to your profile page and copy the URL that the link "Subscribe to MyWebs's RSS feed" leads to. It is located along the top right side part of your profile. The URL should look like this, but with your username instead of mine: http://hubpages.com/author/MyWebs/latest/?rss

I prefer to use both the RSS method in case I forget to manually add a new hub to my account at MyFreeCopyRight.com in addition to the much better method of manually adding a URL too since it saves the full text of my content. Since you only have to add the RSS feed once, do that when you first register an account. It will automatically register any preexisting content you have. Any new content seems to get added via the RSS feed once per day around 1am PST.

Update: According to Edweirdo the RSS feed only adds the last 10 preexisting articles or hubs the first time. So if you have more than 10 you will need to manually add them via the URL method.

I would like to thank Edweirdo for asking me to write this hub. He said he couldn't locate any good information about how to use this service. Hopefully I have filled that void.

I have tried hard to explain this well, but should you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments section below.

By Anthony Goodley ©Anthony Goodley 2010 All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected

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