with the requirement of a coptright search before registration, that makes it so no two people cannot copyright the same thing. basically....first come first serve. It is the same process as registering a business name, a patient, or a trademark. There is a database and that dbase must be searched prior to any registration to avoid duplicate multi party registrations.
The exception (as Erwin says) is two people registering their copyright worded slightly different (as everybody does) and then leave it up to the two parties to drag each other into court to fight it out for ownership.

Steve Machol,
your concerns and questions are over the exact wording and interpretation I was refering to in most of my previous posts. It makes you wonder why everything is so open to interpretation.

Lets not even get into the problem with copyright law spaning countries. Say I live in Mexico where there are no copyright laws at all. If I were to steal someone's work and claim it as my own, there would be nothing they could do about it period.

It is a crazy world but if it weren't...what would we do to amuse ourselves

Please do not misinterpret the terms of "authorship/copyright" and "legal methods of proving it". They are different.

Erwin was right when saying: "Copyright is different to trademarks or patents - you do NOT need to register it. You do NOT even need to put up a notice, though people do it to ensure others respect their copyright.". Because he was referring to "authorship/property right". In nearly all law systems you just don't NEED to proceed a legal procedure to own authorship or copyright of something you did. You own it automatically when you do it. (As a matter of fact I didn't hear any law system that follows a different rule on this matter.)

Also in many law systems there is no legal system or procudure like "copyright registration". I'm not an expert in US-law system so I have recently learned in this thread that US-law system has such an (may I say "odd") registration system but please notice that this procedure has STILL nothing to do with the authorship rights of a copyrighted material, it is just a procedure to "make proval easy for authors", that is it.

Therefore even if you don't follow this procude and register your material, you are still own its authorship, copyright and property rights(yes, even in US law system). It is made clear in FAQ pages of US Copyright Office too:

So registration of an authorship has nothing to do with property rights, it is just a legal system to help you "prove" your right when it is argued in the future.

Besides please notice that this system is a part of US law system and applies to only USA. Also it must be noted that it is alien to many other law systems in the world so has no meaning to anybody but Americans.

So regarding the other thread you discussed the issue, Erwin is still right about his ideas despite the fact that USA has an instute named "Copyright Office".

As far as I am aware, there is no Copyright Registration in the UK either...

I could be wrong as I have never investigated it from a UK perspective, but AFAIK the rules are common to all copyright laws/legislations:)

Satan

I suppose some clarification on everyones part about where they live when discussing laws and right from wrong would have cleared up a lot of confusion.

Possibly, but as far as I was aware, most copyright issues tend to use American copyright laws...

Satan

You have to remember the owner of the Site is Jelsoft Enterprises, a brithish company, so the UK Law is responsible for law discussions.

Nevertheless there are international Copyright Laws ;)