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Where can I put my poems so that they won't be stolen? Like, I need an easy to use place and it has to be free. (link)
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Whenever you write ANYTHING it is, by default, copyrighted.
But so are all songs, and we all know how easy THOSE are to steal. On the plus side, people are probably less likely to steal your poem then a top-40 song. :D
There are a few things you can do to increase your protection:
1. You can put an actual copyright statement on the poem, or the page that it's on. Do this by writing "Copyright (year) (your name)".
So if I wanted to put a copyright statement on this post, I'd put:
Copyright 2006 TheOldOne
Of course, you should use your real name. And the statement MUST be clearly visible.
Instead of "Copyright", you can use the copyright symbol, which is a "c" in a circle. That's available in most fonts. However, please note that putting a "c" in parentheses like this (c) is NOT the same thing, and is NOT a valid copyright statement!
If you're really feeling paranoid, you can actually register your poem with the US copyright office: http://www.copyright.gov/
That costs $30 per item you copyright. But please note that the ONLY thing you get from that is a better case if you take a copyright infringer to court. Legally, your work is automatically copyrighted to you as soon as you create it, and you don't need to register it to protect yourself.
You could also take a technical approach to protect your work, of course. For example, put it into Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or higher with maximum security settings. Those security settings are very hard to beat; I know, because I've tried.
If you don't have Acrobat, you could use Adobe's online conversion service (a free trial is available): http://createpdf.adobe.com/
Alternatively, you could turn the poem into a graphic and post it that way.
Search engines can't capture text from a graphic, and people wouldn't be able to copy & paste it except in the form of the original graphic.
But in the end, if you want people to be able to READ your poem there will *always* be a way for someone to steal it. There's no way to stop someone from reading it and then writing their own copy by hand, for example.
You could, of course, put it on a blog and make it friends-only; that way only a small circle of friends could read it, and with any luck they'd be people that you could trust. On the down side, that would limit your potential audience.
I don't think there's a lot of poetry-stealing going on these days, so the whole issue might not be worth worrying about anyway.
Good luck!
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