Well, KRSplat, he held the copyright from the moment he created it, as he said. Any intellectual property (such as literature, artwork, songs, poetry, messages on newsgroups or bulletin boards, or computer software) is copyrighted from the moment is fixed into a tangible form under US copyright law. Registration merely serves as a public record of the copyright (and a registered copyright would have more weight in court). In any case, distributing software without the author's explicit permission is illegal under most nations' laws.