" anyone can take their shit and do what they like with it"
I do not believe this is correct. I am not a copyright lawyer by any means, but from what I understand, even if you don't claim copyright over a work you have created, the rights automatically go to you. You don't actually have to do anything, and you still get protection.
A good resource is:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#toc
From that page:
"Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright."
*Edited to add* Damn it, I'm a retard, the issue of copyright was cleared up by someone else several pages ago in this thread, that I missed.