I notice that for the past couple of days a copyright notice has appeared on my stories, and many of the others posted recently.
As it obviously takes time to do, there has to be a good reason why it's being done. Are we being plagiarised and sold for huge sums of cash - or in my case used Mars bar wrappers?
I'm not complaining - never managed to find the key for an umlaut let alone a copyright symbol, and I am happy to admit ownership of my witterings, so just curious, like Alice.
Angharad chwilfrydig.
Comments
That would be me Angharad
=^.^=
BigCloset TopShelf
TGLibrary.com
I am always watching over you. Protecting you...
Come out into the light and enjoy life.
Under the Berne Convention...
The presence or absence of a copyright notice is theoretically irrelevant. This was done to conform with the requirements for visual arts, or audible arts for that matter, which don't require the artist to deface a work of art with a copyright notice. There's a move in the USA, on the other hand, to allow infringers to make use of copyrighted material with minimal damages available if they've made a "reasonable effort" to obtain a release for a particular use.
What does make a difference is registration. Without registration, one is limited to actual damages, which is very difficult to prove if one is giving it away for free, and attorney's fees may not be available. With registration, one may choose statutory damages rather than actual, although the amount of "statutory" damages may also be small is the work was originally distributed gratis. With registration, attorney's fees may be available as well. Notice may help to show the the infringement wasn't "innocent, " but it's easy to say that one found a copy on the Web with no notice attached, so the addition of a notice couldn't hurt, but probably won't help all that much either.
The reality is that copyright law is a game for those with deep pockets, and part-time writers are unlikely to be able to mount any serious case, unless one has enough ducks in a row, and an infringer with enough money that it would be worthwhile suing the infringer.
This is why the lawyers went after Napster, although they were relatively innocent third parties, and made only token efforts against the actual infringers, who were mostly young people with no assets to speak of. Napster had assets.
Big mistake. What they should have done was create a company which owned the assets, and then rented them to another company with at least nominally different management.
Cheers,
Liobhan
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Cheers,
Liobhan
UK copyright
Copyright law in the UK is a tad confusing and it is recommended that all intellectual property is © . It used to be the case that you were told to put a paper copy of any material in the post, recorded delivery and addressed to yourself. Once received you do not open the envelope, simply put it away. At any time in the future you have unequivocal proof of prior ownership, so long as the aggrieved party can't prove earlier ownership!
From wikipedia:
Topsy
Mostly Harmless
Argh
You do not need to put a © symbol on your work for it to be copyrighted, in any country that's a signatory to the Berne convention (which is most countries), including (since 1989) the United States. Using a © symbol hasn't been necessary in the US since the 1980s.
Registration is also unnecessary. Mailing the item to yourself ("poor man's copyright") is utterly worthless.
You write it, you own it. You have only to prove that you wrote it first (but courts won't accept mail as proof)
Nor can you place work in the public domain. You can give it away, but that's not the same thing as making it public domain. If you want to give it away, the best way is to allow it to be used under a royalty free license. This is not public domain. Under copyright law something only becomes public domain when the copyright expires.
What you should consider more than claiming copyright it is enforcing it. Like most legal rights, it's only useful insofar as you can do something in the event someone steals your work. If you're writing under a pseudonym, and have previously given it away for free, it's unlikely to be worth defending your copyright in court.
In other words, don't sweat it. The chance that anyone who posts here is going to have a major copyright issue worth defending is pretty slim.
not as think as i smart i am
Characters
On a Windows machine hold down the alt key and type 0169 on the number pad to get the copyright symbol. Characters with an umlaut or other special can be added by going to the character map - Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character Map. This brings up a grid with all the characters in a particular font. Select the character and you'll see its numerical equivalent at the bottom of the window.
One caveat, however. If you're publishing on the web there's no guarantee the font on the web site will use the same special characters as the font on your computer.
mac
and on a mac, use option+g to get the copyright symbol.
not as think as i smart i am