I do not know how popular you are but I'd like to observe a fewthings: 

a) most people develop a strong feeling of deja vu while browsing the internet,
and by that I mean deja vu of their own creations, at other's sites. 99% of the
time this is incorrect. The remaining 1% is real.

Most of the 1% is caused by colportation or short memory effect. Others who read
something forget where they read it then later write it up a little and present
it as their own idea (aka the boss syndrome). Of course some 'forget'
attribution on purpose. Some of these are newspapers and content magazines ...

b) searching for one's own 'utterances' may be hard. Keeping copies of
everything is a good idea. It is possible to automate the search process, and I
wrote some scripts that do that but they are very far from public usability.
Using keywords is definitely not the way to go. Searching for a whole phrase or
part thereof containing at least 6 contiguous non-dictionary words usually
yields results.

c) The way I understand it, when one publishes something (for example posts an
email), then one is automatically assiged the copyright to it even if one does
not assert that. The only exceptions occur when the publication is specifically
placed in the public domain, or when the content of the publication is not
copyrightable.

Peter P.


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