I don't know why anyone would want to bother "illegally" downloading an inferior media for music (ie, Mp3s, when you could have a cd, or a record, better yet...).

When I went to engineering school, I was told by an entertainment lawyer that one thought was to copyright everything the second it was done, and the other said, don't bother, if someone wants to steal it, they easily could with a tiny change here and there, and most people who would want to are musicians and most wouldn't do that?

I'm trying to get my girlfriend to come up here, becusue she does a lot in music as a lawyer. She told me when a friend allowed GameBoy to use his image in a cartoon form for their game, and gave him a waiver to sign (so they wouldn't have to pay him anything else but the 450)--that that was b.s, because you can't sell your own image. If they made money off your voice/face, you get to go back within a certain period of time and make them pay up.

But--a video game trademark/copyright attorney is NOT the same as one who does commerial work, or one who does mostly music, or one who usually does big companies, as I understand it.

You could always go cheap, send yourself a CD copy/ music to yourself registered mail, and don't open it. The postmark is proof of the date of the music.

As I also understand it, the internet IS a form of proof that your song was in existence at such and such date, so I think it's a form of copyright in itself. I have this huge book on music business legalese called "All you need to know about the music business" don't recall author. I bet it's in there. It's a REAL dry read, tho.