http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/201, Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute.
(a) Initial Ownership.— Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work.
(b) Works Made for Hire.— In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.
(c) Contributions to Collective Works.— Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series.
and
(e) Involuntary Transfer.— When an individual author’s ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, has not previously been transferred voluntarily by that individual author, no action by any governmental body or other official or organization purporting to seize, expropriate, transfer, or exercise rights of ownership with respect to the copyright, or any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, shall be given effect under this title, except as provided under title 11, (generally, bankruptcy).
Further, DCMA provided Safe Harbors for digital media providers and ISP services, i.e. TimeWarner, Twitter and YouTube Safe Harbors which does not expose those entities to legal liability for copyright infringement; this however, does not allow for users of those systems to wantonly infringe an another's copyright. Additionally, simply because monetary rewards have not been earned on works in any medium by the original content developer, and that such works have been "published" does not circumvent an author or creator of an original work from exercising copyright ownership.
