I am not certain what your source meant, but when you go to the US
government site concerning copyrights (
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wnp) they state:
"HOW TO SECURE A COPYRIGHT
Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation
The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently
misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the
Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following Note.)
There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See
"Copyright Registration."

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is
"created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time.
"Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually
perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as
books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm.
"Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds
(excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as
cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be
fixed in sheet music (" copies") or in phonograph disks (" phonorecords"),
or both.

If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is
fixed on a particular date constitutes the created work as of that date."

end of quote.

It seems your source either disagrees with the US Copyright Office or your
cite was in reference to another matter, possible republishing someone
Usenet post when responding to a Usenet post.











"basskisser" wrote in message
om...
"Comcast News" wrote in message
news:v5SRc.119596$eM2.57261@attbi_s51...
It has been held up in court, many times. It is illegal to copy a
published
article and then republish it in any format. Now the odds of you being
charged with theft of intellectual property is very slim, but if you
only
obey laws because you feel their is a high probability of being
prosecuted,
than you can probably download music and videos online, and copy someone
else's articles and republish them in rec.boats without losing a lot of
sleep.

Perhaps, instead of someone's hypothesis, we should go right to the
source:
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998

Copyright Office Summary December 1998 Page 3
Registration as a Prerequisite to Suit
The remaining technical amendment relates to the prohibition in both
treaties
against conditioning the exercise or enjoyment of rights on the
fulfillment of
formalities. Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act requires claims to
copyright to be
registered with the Copyright Office before a lawsuit can be initiated
by the copyright
owner, but exempts many foreign works in order to comply with existing
treaty
obligations under the Berne Convention. Section 102(d) of the DMCA
amends section
411(a) by broadening the exemption to cover all foreign works.

Now, granted, this IS cut from a website, but it is law.