Automatic Copyright

Some may think that keeping ideas to themselves is the best policy because they may have experienced times when others have “stolen” their ideas and subsequently benefited. One example I’ve come across is the nefarious boss who downplays an employee’s ideas only to use them to their advantage higher up the chain of command without giving due credit to the employee.

• I would argue that in today’s information economy the best defense is to make our ideas as public as possible, i.e. to give them away. The very worst that can happen is that we gain some credibility even though we may not benefit directly from our ideas. We see this all the time in Content Marketing. A plethora of ideas is given away each day by the likes of Hubspot, Marketing Profs, CMI, et al. There’s so much valuable content given away for which there is no direct monetary gain. But their reputation as an authority grows. Isn’t that the very essence of what good CS and CM is all about? Now, if an idea was thought to be groundbreaking them some type of official registering of copyright (or patent for inventions) would naturally be appropriate, but in general, is giving away ideas a good thing, or is hoarding them until a time when we think it will benefit us better?

What do you think?

• To speak to the concept of automatic copyright, let’s say for the sake of argument that someone has an idea on this forum and openly expresses it and explains it. Are they automatically covered by copyright?

What do you think?