any point of copyright reg. your work?

[Kolstad]

There's a big difference between the actual copyright and the registration of copyrights. It's not a question of copyrighting or not. As Hummingbird wrote it's already copyrighted. The question is if you should register your copyright or not. The copyright office have a great faq http://www.copyright.gov/

But consider what kind of music it is. If I wrote a hit song, and pitched it to T-Pain, yes I would register my copyright. If I did a generic 30sec cue for an MTV show, I would not bother to register the copyright.

[Len911]

Probably the best thing that could happen to an unknown is for someone to steal their song and make it famous

Let's be real, how prevalent is song stealing, I mean illegally,lol! The copyrights are more important for the corporate end of things.

Most of what little "theft" occurs is probably more about a few lyrics or parts of melodies that are similar to another song intentional or not.

If someone steals a song, it is probably because they can't write one themselves, or one as well done. It's pretty naive to think that other songs that are written aren't going to contain certain style elements for comparison. So after the judge orders both parties to write another song, it would be apparent perhaps who the real songwriter was imo.

As you've already pointed out, it is very similar to insurance, but what good is insurance if the deductible is so high you can't afford to make a claim? What happens if you fail to win your case and you are counter sued?

Protection might be important if it was protection, but is it really protection? Does buying a copyright afford you of the full-backing and support of the U.S. government? Perhaps if you're a large corporation they might provide sanctions on a foreign government that was stealing your intellectual property, but for a small time songwriter with a couple songs?

Somewhere here on the forum or maybe a taxi tv episode, it was stated that libraries preferred you didn't copyright and let them do it, so that there isn't any potential clearance and conflict problems that might cause a client to pass. That was my understanding anyway. Ah, I believe it was taxi tv, the episode that featured a couple of successful taxi members.