Copyright question

[jarigo2]

Hey guys,

I know most of you have copyrighted websites so maybe you can help me. I am confused about the wording used on the copyright.gov website pertaining to literary works.

I want to copyright my website http://www.scooterthecocker.com. I want to protect not only my html and text but in addition my photos. Is all of this covered under literary works with a Form TX, or do I need to protect the website in addition to photographs with another form:confused: ?

john

[stevel]

You don't need to fill out a form. A proper notice on each page of your site will do. The notice should look like this:

Copyright 2006 John Smith

You can use the © HTML symbol in addition to the word Copyright, but this does not display well in some Asian-language browsers. "(C)" has no legal status.

[jarigo2]

Hold on a second! I have not registered anything with the copyright office. I need to fill out a form and pay $30 right?

Are you implying put that on the page just for deterrence?

[Doc C]

I suggest you got to copyright.gov . This should give you a starting point. You'll want to check out Circular 66.

There is expense involved so you might want to ask yourself "how many people would want to rip off this site".

Also note that the copyright fee only covers what is submitted, i.e., it does not cover updates nor re-vamps of your site. You get to pay again for that honor.

[stevel]

There is no real-world benefit in paying for copyright registration, unless perhaps you're a major book publisher. When the copyright laws were revised in 1976 or thereabouts, registration or even a notice were no longer required to confer copyright status.

[jarigo2]

There is no real-world benefit in paying for copyright registration, unless perhaps you're a major book publisher. When the copyright laws were revised in 1976 or thereabouts, registration or even a notice were no longer required to confer copyright status.


Thank you!!

[YvetteKuhns]

There is no real-world benefit in paying for copyright registration, unless perhaps you're a major book publisher. When the copyright laws were revised in 1976 or thereabouts, registration or even a notice were no longer required to confer copyright status.

You don't even need a copyright statement on your website to copyright your work. But like an artist signs a painting or drawing, you are telling people the work is yours. If anyone wants to request permission to use text, images or other contents, they would know who to ask.

Make a backup on a cd of all of your files and write the date on it. Each year, you can make a new backup to protect yourself. I thought your website was simply a personal website, but I am unsure. You have Google ads, but are you selling a product or service? I am not sure why YOU are concerned enough to pay money to protect your website, but you have the right to do so.

Watch your referrers for hotlinking to your photos. Watch your access logs to see if your images are being viewed much more than the pages in which they appear. You can use robots.txt or the "no follow" in your links and IMG tags to prevent search engines from indexing your images. You don't want people to search your images and copy them. You can place a "blank" index page in your images folder to prevent people from viewing files in the images directory.

You can watermark your images and place your name on them in opaque text. You can also use an unmarked image and place a transparent gif over it, so if someone right-clicks your image, he/she copies the transparent gif instead! There are many ways to deter image stealing, but it is difficult to stop. Anyone could press Print Screen and dump the screenshot in any image editing software.

Do what you can, but do not get stressed over this. Only worry if "competitor" websites are using your images. Personal websites are not for profit and will largely be ignored by attorneys if you requested a lawsuit over digital property theft. In fact, they really didn't care when someone copied my images and entire web pages! And my website is clearly commercial. You have to be big like Sony or IBM before anyone really cares.

[Doc C]

I know the feeling, Yvette. I had some lowlife steal the entire contents of a website that I'd put a lot of work into. I didn't take legal action because as you say no one wanted to handle it. But as they say, revenge is a dish best served cold, and mine was served up in in liquid nitrogen!! :)

Go with what Yvette says and watermark your photos. Use the money you'd spend for fees and such and buy your doggie a present! You'll both feel better.

[YvetteKuhns]

I interviewed someone who went to the same college as I did. I did not hire her, because her own website and work were not impressive. She simply used free stuff or other people's work and she lacked knowledge and creativity. She went home and "redesigned" her website. She simply saved my web pages and edited very little. She even forgot to edit the meta keywords which were not appropriate for her. Soon she found her pages appearing in the top ten on search engines with mine. She never updated the pages and the old copyright dates still appear. Hopefully, anyone who would contact her or me will discover who the real designer is. ;)

[nolamad]

as for photographs, you might want to take a look at this, written by an attorney.

http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm