Quote:Original post by Kryzon
I've never found any easy resource explaining Copyrights; is it true that just stating "Copyright (c) 2010 My Name\Company name" protects that original work you just did?

Pretty much, yes.

Quote:Is this internationally accepted (in the majority of nations, at least)?

Yes; please google "Berne convention".

Quote:Do you need to pay anything to the government of your country to make it oficial, or just by placing that copyright line you are protected?

You never need to pay anything for a copyright. There is no process for "registering a copyright". It is different from trademarking or patenting.

Quote:Original post by MarthKoopa
A player could easily open up Graphics/Characters/MainDude.png and doodle all over it, or switch out Music/Battle/Boss1.mp3 for something else... I just want to neatly tuck everything out of reach of children in a simple way.

If that's your whole concern, encrypt your data (does not really matter how, the poorest encryption will do), or save a CRC for every asset, preferrably in a not immediately obvious place (could even download these from the internet each time). If the CRC does not match, refuse to load the asset.

That won't stop someone from cracking your software if there is enough "interest" to do so (unless a few ten thousand people play your game, nobody will probably bother to put so much work into cracking your protection), but it's enough to keep it out of the reach of children, and from a technical point of view, it is about as much protection as you can get, anyway (for the reasons stated by the previous posters).

Thanks for the resolution, Zahlman.

Quote:Original post by Kryzon
I've never found any easy resource explaining Copyrights; is it true that just stating "Copyright (c) 2010 My Name\Company name" protects that original work you just did?

It depends on what country you're in. Some countries (the U.S. for example) don't even require a copyright notice as all works are automatically under copyright protection (although you should probably still use one just to remove any doubt as to authorship), some countries require a copyright notice which puts the work under copyright protection, and some countries may require some sort of registration process for copyright protection. Generally the last case can be ignored unless you have reason to suspect otherwise, as very few countries are not signatory to the treaty that makes copyright automatic.

In general, just paste a copyright notice on anything you think might need it. It certainly can't hurt, and will take care of everything for the vast majority of countries. If you're really concerned about the details, you need to consult with a lawyer (which I am not, just passing on the information as my lawyer has explained to me).

If it's data, just make an encryptor, also, hide and lock all the files by right clicking, then go to properties -> atributes -> hide. You can also select read only for files that wont be written to. These files can't be viewed unlesss someone has show hidden files enabled on their computer, which most people don't, and encrypted files, of done properly, are hard to edit, because you would most likely fail, unless you knew the algorithm it was encrypted with.