By international agreement on copyright it exists (in signatory countries) as soon as the material has been put into physical form[1]. Registration, in those countries which do that, only helps in court cases to show when it was created. If the Google Settlement tries to infringe that on works from outside the USA I suspect that they will be sued by every other country whose material is being hijacked -- and the USA might find itself in bad odour for having unilaterally broken the agreement.
[1] There is still dispute about electronic form from a practical point of view, since it is easy to 'forge' dates on disks. However, once something has been put into public view (a Usenet post, website, etc.) there is little doubt that this at least provides a "latest date of creation" for it.
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mmmag
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Date: 2009-04-25 08:27 am (UTC)[1] There is still dispute about electronic form from a practical point of view, since it is easy to 'forge' dates on disks. However, once something has been put into public view (a Usenet post, website, etc.) there is little doubt that this at least provides a "latest date of creation" for it.