Copyright is a type of guarantee provided by the American Constitution and made available by law. Specifically, there’s the Copyright Act of 1976, for the protection of original works, both published and unpublished. The law essentially assures that authors get exclusive rights to what they have created. This includes design, text or copy, pictures, coding, and even other mediums like music, videos, and film.
In general, copyright law includes the creator’s rights to reproduce, create derivatives, distribute, and publicly display the work. Now, original work must be copyrighted the moment it is created, provided it is tangibly documented by being saved on a hard drive, written or printed on paper, recorded on video, etc.
Copyrighting a Website
Websites are inherently tangible. After all, they run on media, text, and code. Most websites you see have a copyright notice at the bottom section of each page. This is where the website owner explicitly warns against using or reproducing any element on the website without their consent. This applies whether the site visitor sees the notice or not, as the law that requires public notice was scrapped more than 30 years ago.
Registration Fee
Should you ever have to sue someone for infringement, you need to officially register your website for $35 with the copyright office, as well as make a “content deposit,” which is basically your website as it displays in the browser (you need to upload your content into their system).
What seems to make it difficult is the need to make a new deposit and pay the registration fee every time you update your site. You’d immediately think that’s too expensive and time-consuming, considering the constant changes you make on your website to keep it relevant. Obviously exempt from this requirement, however, are works that are considered to be a continuing creation, like newsletters and databases.
Reviewing Specific Guidelines
If you want to know the website copyright rules in detail, take time to review Circular 66 of the Copyright Office. But don’t feel daunted by the first few sentences. They practically tell you that websites are not protected by copyright in the eyes of the law, although you can register a website or a particular web page if it meets certain guidelines.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve been wrong up to this point. The Copyright Office is simply saying that while you can’t copyright your website, or the code inside it, you can protect all original works you put in it. So go right ahead and register your creations if you must. It’s just a matter of adding a copyright symbol with the year the copyright applies.
However, don’t make the mistake of simply copying and pasting any random copyright symbols from a word processor or even anywhere online. Sometimes, these elements will only show on certain web platforms. The right way to do it is through code.
How to Copyright Your Website Correctly
The easiest and safest method of copyrighting your website content is to include a copyright statement in your footer. As mentioned, this would typically go at the bottom of every page. Being a legal statement, it should be small in size. Just put in the symbol © along with the text ‘Copyright’ plus the current year or the year your website was launched.
HTML Code for the Copyright Symbol
You can safely add the copyright symbol by using the following HTML symbol code:
<footer>
<small>© Copyright {{currentYear}}, Emergo Media</small>
</footer>
You’ll want to use a dynamic code for the year so it updates itself and you don’t have to dig into the code from time to time.
Javascript Code for the Copyright Symbol
If you render your pages with JavaScript, you can do the same with the following code:
var d = new Date();
page.currentYear = d.getFullYear();
Don’t forget to add the markup to your primary site layout or app shell so it works for all pages automatically.
Another alternative is the ASCII code © and some other codes, depending on the UTF encoding of the file. But this goes back to what we had mentioned earlier. Indiscriminately copying and pasting this code isn’t always effective because the symbol may not display as it should in all browsers due to formatting differences. That’s why sticking to HTML or Javascript is best.
Conclusion
Web content is innately copyrighted, but you can make an explicit public claim to your intellectual property rights. You’ll do this by placing a small notice below each of your web pages. While your website itself – meaning, your code or application – may not be copyrighted, all of your creations can be.
If you have to sue someone for infringement, that’s the time you have to officially register your content with the Copyright office. Most websites have a copyright notice on each page, but adding one can be tricky. You need to do it in a web-safe manner so you can be sure that your notice renders properly, regardless of the browser used by your site visitor.
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