Minor Sunday rant

A few things that all writers should know:

1. The word "copyright" is not a fucking verb, it is a noun.
2. Copyright exists at the point of creation of an artistic work. As stated by The UK Copyright Service: "To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibits a degree of labour, skill or judgement." You do not have to do anything to become the copyright holder of your work. You don't have to fill in a form and pay some money to your national copyright service - that only registers you as the copyright holder of your work and provides security for you should a dispute over rights ownership arise. Nor do you have to put that © copyright symbol at the end of everything you write - your are still the copyright holder with or without that statement.
3. When you have a piece of work accepted by a publication and they ask for certain rights (First North American Serial Rights, First Electronic Rights, Electronic Archival Rights, for example) you are not handing over the copyright but are merely licensing the publication to use your work in specific ways. The copyright remains under your ownership unless you sign a contract that explicitly hands the copyright over to someone else.
4. Mailing a copy of your work by registered post to yourself isn't actually an effective way to prove yourself to be the author of your work. That's a bit of an urban myth.
5. Work that appears on a website is protected by copyright laws and not "public domain" or "fair game".

If you are a writer and didn't know any of the above then shame on you. It's your business to know the basic principles of how copyright laws work. The rules are easy enough to find: simply type "[you country] copyright laws" into a search engine and odds are that among the first results will be your country's copyright agency. There's no excuse, really.

Writers who not only don't understand the basics of copyright but also go around telling other ignorant writers a load of baloney on the matter really get on my tits. So go and find this stuff out for yourself. It's not that hard and it won't take long.

Oh, and one last thing: learn the fucking difference between "copyright" and "copywrite", fool.