Guild registration provides a unique service to writers that cannot be effectively duplicated individually. By establishing a date of completion to which the Guild, as a disinterested third party, can testify, the Guild helps writers who get into the unfortunate position of having to defend their rights to their work. Other projections, such as Copyright Registration with the Library of Congress provide other benefits. The Guild service is not a replacement for copyright registration or any other protection. And, some schemes that are supposed to help establish evidence of authorship, such as sending a registered letter to yourself, do not stand up in court as neutral and tamper-proof.
Registration remains a proven and reliable service.
Indeed, the greatest impact of registration, in concert with other protection efforts, may be to discourage misappropriation of material. To see that a script was registered with the Guild by virtue of the receipt number on the cover page or simply knowing that many writers register scripts with the Guild, many people who might otherwise borrow a creative scene or character or more, are likely discouraged before they start. The details of protecting literary material are not always clear to writers who come to the department. Some writers, who know they should register their stories and scripts but don't know why, will go through the entire process, celebrate with their co-writers that the script is done and registered and then, almost on the way out the door, turn back and ask what they just did and what protection they just got. The department was operated for many years by Blanche Baker, who many writers in the Guild remember fondly.