A friend once said to me concerning copyrights, "I wish someone would steal one of my songs, at least I would know I was on the right track!"

If you post it in the right places, such as youtube, there's proof right there that you had the song on such and such date. You've got witnesses if it got right down to it.

A friend of mine that wrote a country classic told me once, "They don't steal your song, they steal your idea." Meaning they just rewrite your song. And I may be paranoid but a song of mine was getting pitched a lot in Nashville. It never got recorded but not long after my song made the rounds out came a song by a popular artist (that he wrote) and it was a big hit. The song had the same idea as mine and almost the same title. A publisher also once told me that you have to be careful who you played your songs for.

(Soap box) Thievery is a part of life. All of us do it. A guy has a great idea at work, word gets around and everybody is doing the same thing. I see someone play a hot lick on the guitar and I copy it. Microsoft steals from Apple, Apple steals from Microsoft, the hyena steals a kill from a cheetah, a man opens a store on a corner and starts making a killing and suddenly here comes the other guy opening a store on the other corner trying to steal his business, and the beat goes on ad infinitum. It's not human nature, it's the nature of life.

"The desire for fame is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise."
Cornelius Tacitus