A In matters of U.S. Evidence Law, electronic files are admissible in a court of law as evidence, IF the file is archived to a remote third-party website where neither the plaintiff or defendant has access to the file. In other words, it's on equal standing with the WGA with added perks such as a verification service where anyone can verify the registration of a work with company via the website.

A For Writers: WriteVault.Com is an independent registry service that acts as an interim low cost registration service before heading to copyright. We do not and cannot replace an official copyright registration, however sometimes you need to share a piece of work quickly for peer review and you might not have the funds to protect a piece before sending it to a contest or review service. Our protection acts just like a WGA registration service with added perks like download history, 48 hour grace period for title, type, and description corrections, and finally public/private toggles to share or hide your work.

For Artists: Over the last few years we have recorded instances of work being stolen from independent artists and used in mass production to sell to consumers. For example: Many designers on Etsy have seen their special custom made products end up at Urban Outfitters and not by choice. To protect your work, it is essential to help end theft and document your creation's entire process so you can FIGHT BACK!

References: Urban Outfitters: link 1 link 2

AIf it needs to be protected as intellectual property, and you can upload it digitally, you can register it with Write Vault.

We register novels, short stories, comic books, graphic novels, treatments, screenplays, short screenplays, outlines, artwork, designs, patterns (clothing, etc), photographs, digital art, anything that can be protected digitally with a timestamp.

For our Writers, we recommend submitting PDFs for public/user access because they are universally easy to download and read. However, we do accept other file formats for your convenience. See the list in the next question below for accepted file formats.

For our Musicians & Composers, we recommend submitting PDFs for public/user access because they are universally easy to download and read. However, we do accept other file formats for your convenience. See the list in the next question below for accepted file formats.

For our Artists, we recommend uploading a "Process File" which is much like a portfolio for your property. Simply create a PDF that includes your contact information, a detailed description of your property, and a series of photos that begin with creation and end with the finished product from various angles. These Process Files are not publicly available in any way to protect you because a Process File reveals too much of your important process. We offer artists a second field to upload a photograph or other document showing authorship that can be set to public or private.

For our Photographers/Illustrators, we recommend placing watermarks on every single image uploaded or if placed in a document (PDF) when you choose to make these documents available to users publicly. See the Artist section above for creating a Process File

Example 1:

Barbara completed a sculpture in her collection that is attracting attention, she takes a photo of it (from all sides) and creates a pdf of the creation process to the final product. She uploads the pdf to WriteVault.Com and her certificate states the day she registered it. Should a company steal her design and manufacture copies of it, she has further evidence stating authorship as the creator of the sculpture.

Example 2:

George has finished the third draft of his novel. It's not quite ready to submit to Copyright.Gov but he needs to submit it for peer review and protect his work. He uploads it to WriteVault.Com and has immediate access to a certificate containing the timestamp of his submission. When the novel is ready to send out to the market he will register it with the Copyright.Gov*

Example 3:

Arda has a short screenplay she wants to submit to InkTip.Com. InkTip requires a form of registration/protection to be listed in their database, whether it's a copyright, a WGA registration or Write Vault. She registers it with WriteVault.Com to fulfill their requirements and save money.

A Each project uploaded to WriteVault.Com is $10.00 for 10 years of registration. It includes uploading your project, description fields, making your project available as private or public at any time, and download statistics (if your project is set to 'public'). All that for 1$ a year!

We also offer coupons for future registrations in our quarterly newsletter. Sign up Here.

A

One. For your legal protection we require that you upload one project per credit.

For Writers: A project can be a novel (or script) or an anthology but not multiple novels (or multiple scripts) and not short stories collected together with no intentions of publishing as a whole piece. If you are writing a television series, indvidual episodes should be registered separately, as per requirements by the US copyright office.

For Musicians & Composers: A project can be sheet music or other notations in electronic formats such as pdf or other file format we currently accept. Coming soon!: audio file uploads.

For Artists: A project can be a pattern with multiple photographs but is one pattern being protected. A project is also a thematic collection of photographs by a photographer or it could just be one photograph.

Our point is, legally speaking, just as with a copyright, you cannot submit more than one project per credit. It's not safe and dilutes your legal protection should theft occur later down the line.

If you have any questions about how many credits you should purchase, please contact us.

Note: If you are setting your project to 'public' access, we personally recommend uploading in "non-editable" formats such as PDF or watermarked images. If you plan to only keep your projects private (permanently), use any file format listed above.

A For Written Works and Process Files and the file cap is 15 megabytes. For added cover art, if you choose to upload any, the file cap is 5 megabytes.

A We offer a 48 hour grace period to edit the title, description, genre, and any other text-based fields you were offered when registering your property.

After this grace period, please contact us with the email address on file and your registration # to request any changes to fields listed above. We cannot make changes to your upload file for your legal protection and for security related reasons. Should a file become corrupted during the upload process we can delete the registration and offer you a NEW registration for that property at no cost. Contact us if you have any questions.

Only the ability to switch a project from Public to Private is available for editing after the 48 hour grace period. To do this, LOGIN (top of page) to your account and visit your Member Account Page. Your projects will be listed in this area. Simply click the 'edit' next to your project and you be able to toggle your property to private or public. (All registrations, when created, default to private.)

A If you have created an account, but not confirmed it, there is nothing you need to do. It will automatically be deleted by the end of the day

If you are a confirmed member with an account, please contact us with your username and email address listed in the account. We will delete the account and all registrations under the account for you.

A Your work is added to our searchable database immediately. In reverse the same is true, when you switch your work to "Private", it is removed from the database immediately.

A Electronic files are admissible in a court of law as evidence, IF the file is archived to a remote third-party website where neither the plaintiff or defendant has access to the file.

WriteVault.Com provides the "no access" part by allowing you to upload your work but not to access the document/file/property once it's online. To protect our users from unauthorized access to the files on our network, each file registered with WriteVault.Com is stored in an area inaccessible via the website. We then back up our website to encrypted 'cloud' networks and offline storage for redundancy.

A No, not unless your project is set to public or you ask us to, (we're not sure why you'd do that though, we don't use our industry connections to help customers find employment or representation).

Every file uploaded to our database is encrypted, and the file name is changed to a very long string of numbers and letters to protect it further. Even if we could easily figure out which document was yours, we have no reason to access it except in cases of subpoena for use in arbitration. If a subpoena is issued, we still can't/won't read it; we only show proof of registration to legal counsel and deliver the file for comparison purposes.

WriteVault.Com provides the "no access" part by allowing you to upload your work but not to access the document/file/property once it's online. To protect our users from unauthorized access to the files on our network, each file registered with WriteVault.Com is stored in an area inaccessible via the website. We then back up our website to encrypted 'cloud' networks and offline storage for redundancy.

A Click the green Download History button in My Account. A contact button will appear next to the user that downloaded your project. Click this button and create your message to the user.

A Three reasons.

The 1st reason is to lower overhead and pass our savings on to you. It also increases security with our website. Our goal is to keep your documents safe. By using a third-party processor, we do not have to store or pass credit card information through the server, which reduces security risks.

The 2nd reason is: The owners of Write Vault are both long time business users and customers with problem free PayPal histories. We enjoy the service it provides and want to pass on that enthusiasm and ease of use.

The 3rd reason is PayPal accepts funds internationally, which is imperative to our users from around the world.

If you prefer not to use PayPal, we now take credit card payments using 2048-bit signatures, 128/256 bit encryption to protect your transactions. Make your choice at the payment screen using the drop down menu presented.

A No.

What happened to WriteSafe.Com?

We have no idea.

At one point according to the prior owner of the company, it was sold to another entity which seems to have buried it. Their domain expired in February 2013 which leads us to believe they don't plan on bringing the service back.

And that is why WriteVault exists.

The owners of WriteVault.Com were customers of writesafe.com in the past and thought the service should still be alive but cleaner, faster, cheaper and more user friendly.

Our team uses WriteVault.com to market their own projects, and we have no plans of discontinuing the service with the exception of Apocalypse, Zombie infestations, or Nuclear War. Even if these things DID happen, as long as the net exists, this service will too. Even if we have to stop taking new projects, all uploaded projects will live our their registration life for the full 10 years or you can hunt us down. We promise.

Update: It appears the writesafe domain was renewed by another entity but is still unused as of April 28,2013

A In the event an author dies, an heir or representative of an heir and/or estate must provide proof of death (death certificate) and registration numbers of the author's work. After we receive this information we will give the Executor of the Estate account access and/or delete the author's registrations on their behalf. We recommend recording or saving your registration certificates with your will.

FYI: Your work will expire and be removed from the system after its expiration date.

A Contact Us with your questions and we will respond shortly.