I've been working as a journalist since 1990, and the print media industry and copyright is very different from the copyright problems with movies and music. The courts changed the rules on copyright and be warned that it only applies to the United States copyright law. There is an international copyright treaty, but many countries did not agree to it and some countries do not even have copyright laws!
The Indie movement is supposedly changing how music and movies are done, but to avoid the complications to simplify the entire process, also means that the hard work can be stolen. The movie and music industries have a bad reputation of product theft thereby giving rise to the organizations that now exist to protect writers and artists' work.
In a perfect world, the moment work is created, it's protected by automatic copyright without registration and the films and music are sold from websites without a hitch. As Indie music and movie production grows in popularity, there will be more websites created to provide services to copyright, bar code and market the products made by hard working Americans. All the independent artists and production companies have to do is collect the paycheck! Nice.
