Do you guys copyright your sites?

I mean through special agencys or services like C-Site for instance where it makes your site federally copyrighted and protected by US law.

Thanks

Since most countries in the world, including the United States, use the Bern copyright convention, almost every piece of work (including web sites) written is automatically copyrighted, notice or not.

There is a site called creativecommons.org. Check it out.

-- Josh

I will check that out..

Thanks

Anytime, bud :)

While Josh is right, gaining official copyright recognition of your work gains you additional legal rights that the "automatic" or Bern copyright convention doesn't grant you.

For instance, official recognition will give you dated paperwork to be used in a court to show that you created the work in question on a specific date. Your automatic copyright doesn't give you that,

True that :)

Originally posted by sonicgroup
While Josh is right, gaining official copyright recognition of your work gains you additional legal rights that the "automatic" or Bern copyright convention doesn't grant you.

For instance, official recognition will give you dated paperwork to be used in a court to show that you created the work in question on a specific date. Your automatic copyright doesn't give you that,
Yes but in the UK for example, there is no such thing as copyright registration. There is no government agency that allows you to file for copyright. Copyright is automatic, legally you don't even need the copyright symbol for something to be copyrighted... it just is.

http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/protect_rights.htm

and

http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/auto_protection.htm

Rich2k is correct about the UK laws. And it can be used in courts as well can't it?

Of course.

Originally posted by joephill
Do you guys copyright your sites?

I mean through special agencys or services like C-Site for instance where it makes your site federally copyrighted and protected by US law.

Thanks
Well, why would you do that? It's just another unnecessary expense, unless your site is making at least $50,000/month or more. Just put the © sign on all your web page footers and you will be fine. You could also disable right-click. Good luck.

You can always work around disabling the right-click if the user knows what he is doing.

That's 1999. Just have a copyright, and if you see the content of your site somewhere, do something about it. If you don't go looking around for it, or hear something about it and don't do anything, you shouldn't have been so worried about it in the first place.

Whee!

Originally posted by ******
Well, why would you do that? It's just another unnecessary expense, unless your site is making at least $50,000/month or more. Just put the © sign on all your web page footers and you will be fine. You could also disable right-click. Good luck.

No need to do that even. You do not need a copyright symbol for countries adhering to the Berne convention. Copyright is automatic for all original work by the author.

I used to own a magazine, we published every month and to save the expence of having every thing actualy registered copyright, we would put it in a manilla envelope and mail it to ourself. Then you have your legal date stamped om by the US Post Office, or where ever you are, and that (for us at the magazine) was all we needed to prove our case. Although we never had a need to take it to court.

That's a good idea. But, website content changes everyday. So, I don't know. I would be more interested, being as I am a web designer, to copyright my actual code and images that I create. CreativeCommons is a good place for that, I heard.

I have another question on this topic. It is ok to just put like '© My Name" or should I include a year in that?

And then when including a year should it be the most current year or like 1999-2005?

Thanks,
-Ryan

It should be this: "Copyright (c) 2004 Company. All rights reserved."

Nothing to it :)

Originally posted by VoxxitDesigns
It should be this: "Copyright (c) 2004 Company. All rights reserved."

Nothing to it :)

Um, its now 2005 ;)

Gary

LOL. Just giving an example :)

Thanks for the reality check ;)

According to UK copyright you should put the year of publication. Of course for websites the publication is continuous so I tend to put the first year of publication through to the the current.

I put like, "Copyright (C) 2005, Force16 Studios"

Then, every year I'll update the year or put "- [year]" after it.

And a lesser known fact. Copyright covers only content, "NOT" layout and design

All original work - that would include design work.

will7;

Design is not covered.

You can go to Microsoft.com, use their design (templates) on your site, and as long as you didn't use any protected logo's / artwork there isn't anything they could do.

The exception to this is if you're using custom scripting to generate the layout of your site, then perhaps you will aquire protection as the layout is a byproduct of your software (code)

BTW just checked a coiuple of sites who updated their copyrights with 2005.

No updates at:
- WHT :)
- MSN
- Paypal

Updated
- Google
- Amazon
- Yahoo

I'm not a lawyer but there are various areas to copyright law.

Code and programs is classified as 'original literary works' under UK copyright law and this indeed doesn't cover layout or design work, however there is a seperate area for 'original artistic works' and as a layout is an artistic drawing/craft from the web designer it could probably be classified as an artisitic work under copyright.

Whilst I am not a lawyer I have done quite a bit of research into UK copyright law (which is pretty much the same as most other counties)

I bet if you took Microsoft's EXACT design but changed the logos and text they would still issue a DMCA filing to you.

Originally posted by Tmonster
BTW just checked a coiuple of sites who updated their copyrights with 2005.

No updates at:
- WHT :)
- MSN
- Paypal

Updated
- Google
- Amazon
- Yahoo

It doesn't actually need the current year as the year in a copyright notice is supposed to be the year of publication, now do you argue that the year of publication is the year the website went live or is it continuous thus 1994-2005?

Since they are websites which update their content daily you need to update the year to show that you aim to protect all content including the latest one.

Godaddy has a very nice service for filing a copyright you can check it out. Its also cheap. Though I suggest creativecommons