What is a website copyright notice? What does it mean? Does it protect my website? How do you create one?

That’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this week’s episode of Ask Kiff.

Watch the video | Read the show notes | Read the transcript

Show notes

• Read this post to learn the value of registering your copyrights
• Grab your copy of the U.S. Copyright Office’s Compendium so you can register your website copyright (Chapter 1000 is websites)
• Watch this Ask Kiff episode to learn how to fill out the exclusions page of your copyright registration application

Transcript

If you scroll down to the bottom of pretty much any website, you’re going to see in the footer a little copyright notice. It’ll say something like © 2018 followed by the name of the business. So mine says © 2018 the artist’s J.D. LLC.

What does this notice mean? Does it really do any good? How do you create one?

That’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this week’s episode of Ask Kiff.

This week’s question comes to us from Dan in Oregon. Dan asks,

Can I place a blanket copyright on everything on my website?

Great question Dan.

Hi, I’m Kiffanie Stahle, founder of the artist J.D. A place designed to add ease to the legalese of running your creative business.

Since 1989 the copyright notice, that © Year followed by who the copyright owner is, that’s been optional. Prior to 1989, putting that copyright notice on your content was a requirement to get copyright. But since 1989 it’s completely optional.

So even though a copyright notice isn’t required, it’s a good idea to include. Because it puts people on notice that your content is copyrighted.

So your copyright notice is just going to say:

• this is the year that this content was first published
• it’s protected by copyright, using the copyright symbol
• the name of your business

If you have multiple authors of your blog and you want to list that out, then the notice just becomes longer. It would be © 2017 the artist’s J.D. LLC and Kiffanie Stahle.

Here in the United States, we operate on an incentive-based copyright registration system. So in order to enforce your copyright, registration is pretty much required.

Sure yes, you can enforce an unregistered copyright. But is way harder than enforcing a registered copyright.

So great resource if you are considering registering your website with the U.S. Copyright Office is what’s called the Compendium.

This is a publication that’s printed by the U.S. Copyright Office. It’s available electronically as a PDF so you don’t have to worry about getting a copy. And it’s close to 1500 pages long.

And it covers all the aspects of what is and isn’t registrable with the U.S. Copyright Office. And provides lots of tips and tricks on how to go about registering it.

So if you’re considering registering your website, you’re going to go, I’m gonna give you the link to the Compendium, and you’re going to grab Chapter 1000. And it goes through exactly how you’re going to register your website.

Remember the downside of registering your website with the U.S. Copyright Office is what you register is set in stone. It’s that exact thing that you upload to the U.S. Copyright office.

• If you change your About page, your new About page isn’t covered.
• If you publish 20 new blog posts, those 20 blog posts aren’t covered.
• If you revamp your Services page, that new Services page isn’t covered.

What’s covered is what’s exactly submitted. So with websites, it’s one of those things that you’re gonna have to do on an ongoing basis if you want to register it.

And remember registration is pretty critical to enforcement.

The other thing that is important when it comes to registering your websites with the U.S. Copyright Office is that page of the application that’s called the exclusions page.

A couple of weeks back I did a video where I walked you through how you’re going to fill out that page. So I’m going to give you the link to that Ask Kiff episode as well. So that you can see how you’d fill out that page.

Next week we’re going to be talking about patterns and copyright. Can those patterns that you write be protected by copyright? So if you create patterns, you’re not going to want to miss next week’s episode.