Digital Theft of Intellectual Property - Songs, Lyrics, Stories, Text, Blog & Facebook Material is a fast-growing problem.

Songwriters, Authors, Programmers, Bloggers, Designers, Photographers and many more Creative People are unwittingly putting their Intellectual Property at risk from online digital theft.

With somewhere in the region of almost 3 billion people now having easy access to Internet, the incidences of IP theft - 'Intellectual Property Theft' - have never been higher.

'Intellectual Property' includes original material such as music and lyrics, stories, speeches, logos, photographs and so on. Part of the problem lies in the very technology that modern, creative individuals use, on a daily basis, to record and store their work.

The application of the internationally-recognized Copyright symbol - the '©' - no longer carries any protection at all from many millions of unscrupulous individuals - and business owners - prepared to steal songs, music, lyrics, designs, text or blogposts using the latest digital technology.

It's estimated that millions of dollars are being lost every day by creative artists whose intellectual property has been 'lifted', illegally and without the owner's consent, to make money with no intention of sharing the profits with the creators of these often-valuable works.

Even artists who don't publish their material on the web are at risk. The simple use of a home computer can jeopardize and financially compromise the actual ownership of the Intellectual Property as it's being created.

One major Search Engine has been found to have the ability to record information being input on any computer that has an Internet connection - even before the 'return' key has been struck, while the user is actually inputting the information. While there's no suggestion that such activity is being used for illegal purposes, it does illustrate how computer use can put the copyright work of songwriters, musicians, designers, authors or programmers in danger.

Add the vast numbers of internet trojans, worms, adware, spyware and viruses invading and infecting computers worldwide every second of the day, the chances of Intellectual Property being accessed illegally multiplies exponentially.

The terms of the Berne Convention lay out how creative people can Copyright their material. All it takes is to write the words 'Copyright by...' followed by the name of the author of the work, and the date. In the real world, the protection that this offers is meagre at best.

The US Copyright office offers a very good copyright protection system, although it can prove expensive for speculative composers and writers at $45 per work. It can also be labor-intensive and slow, taking (sometimes) up to 4 months to receive registration.

The alternative, so-called 'Poor Man's Copyright' offers no protection from the Internet 'Pirates' who illegally use and distribute other people's copyright material on a daily basis.

These circumstances have led in these Internet years to the rise of 'Copyright Registration' on-line, where independent companies offer digital recoding of the record of Copyright to users. The raison d'être of these methods is to provide an independent 'witness' that the Copyrighted Work was indeed in existence at the time the Copyright Claimant says it was.

The demand for these companies' services has been driven by the need for 'instant gratification' required by modern-day Internet users, who expect (and require) a result the moment they 'click' a mouse.

And the fact is that in this digital age, even the thought of having to apply by snail-mail for a copyright is about as credible as steam-driven taxis plying the streets of New York in 2008.

It seems likely that with the thousands of websites being created every day, plus the constant, 24/7 dissemination of copyright material through the Internet, the need for on-line Copyrighting services can only increase.