How do I get a copyright for youtube?

Rhine,

Your original songs were copyrighted as soon as you created them. But I understand your concern, there's a lot of piracy going on on YouTube, so you should do what you can to protect yourself.

The very best thing to do is register your songs with the government, but this might take a while and would only be necessary if you end up suing someone down the road (which in my opinion is a last resort, but an important one if they take your songs and then make money off of them!).

I suggest you watermark your video for starters. I'm not a video techy so I can't tell you how to do this but there are some YouTube videos explaining how to do this with certain softwares. Also keep any proof you have as to when you first created your songs.

For more information see:

Legally, you don't have to. According to the law, a work is automatically copyrighted as soon as it's "put into a final form." In other words, it is copyrighted when you upload it.

But you have the copyright only for stuff you created. This excludes other people's stuff you edited or remixed or cut-and-pasted. They still have the copyright for that, no matter how much better you made it.

Hope that helps.

Since they're your original songs, you already own the copyright for them. Just make sure you document proof that it is your song and that you have it *now*. If you see someone else post those songs (not covers- those are legal), you can send a takedown request to YouTube and they will be legally obligated to pull that other video down.