Fountain of Knowledge

I know a little about this, though I know other people know more.

Anything you post on this site is copywritten in your name, you'll see it at the bottom of each of your pieces, a copywrite date and your username. So if someone in the US were to pilfer it, you would have legal rights. You're right that people in other countries aren't subject to the same reprecussions, though.

There are ways to help avoid this. The site has several options for determining who can view your work. The simplest way, if you want other site members to be able to read it and comment with ease, is to use the membership level restrictions. I do this on almost everything I post by default. there's an option when you create or edit the item to restrict viewing to 'registered users or higher,' 'registered authors or higher', etc.

There are two other restriction options that will help limit access even further. If you belong to any groups (like Upgrade Aides for instance) you can set the viewing restriction so that only members of that group can see it. you can also go as far as setting it so that it's for your eyes only. When you set any of these restriction options, you can create a passkey (it has to be all numbers) and give that code to anyone who doesn't fall into those guidelines. That way, people you trust can be given access to your work without being members of the site.

Of course, there's never a 100% guarantee that anything on the internet is safe, but this will help you protect your work here from the majority of plagerists.