How to write a copyright notice for your website?

Posted on July 2nd, 2019

For websites, there is a standard structure that most of the sites follow. One of the main components of such a structure is its copyright notice. Have you ever seen the phrase “All right reserved” in the footer of websites and wondered what the use of that phrase is? The phrase is the copyright notice of the website. In this tutorial, we are going to see the copyright notice in detail and the copyright in general. 

What is copyright?

The copyright is the legal right to the creator of an original work giving him exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This copyright varies according to the rights the owner would like to grant to the public. The owner of the content or code or any digital property can use the copyright notice to reserve rights on his/her work. This notice is called the copyright notice.

The phrase “All rights reserved” is copyright formality used to inform the users that the content on the webpage is protected by copyright. This phrase originated as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910. The Buenos Aires Convention is a copyright treaty signed at Buenos Aires, Argentina on 11 August 1910. According to Article 3 of this treaty, the copyright is granted in all of its signatory countries to work registered in any of the signatory countries. But it needs a statement “that indicates the reservation of the property right” (emphasis added) to appear in that work. People usually ued the phrase “All rights reserved” as a statement to indicate the reservation of property right even though the phrase was not specified in the text.

There were also other copyright treaties that did not require this copyright formality. Some examples are the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), The Berne Convention, etc.

The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) adopted the famous copyright symbol “©” to indicate the protection in 1952. The symbol “©” was introduced in the US.

The Berne Convention rejected formalities altogether in Article 4 of the 1908 revision. It allowed the owners of works who wish to protect their work if they are in signatory countries of the Berne Convention, were also not required to use the phrase “All rights reserved”. But as not all of the Buenos Aires convention signed member countries were members of the Berne Convention or the Universal Copyright Convention, people used the phrase “All right reserved” and the copyright symbol “©”.

As we’ve seen earlier, many countries are signatory countries of the Buenos Aires Convention who have not taken membership of Berne convention. These countries started to be members of the Berne Convention gradually, and the last member was Nicaragua. The country became a member of Berne Convention on August 23, 2000, so that the use of the phrase “All rights reserved” was complete, obsolete. As of now, a country that is a member of the Berne Convention will be granted copyright protection without any formality or notice of copyright.

The phrase has become popular, and it is still being used by the authors, writers, artists, etc to avoid the ambiguity over the copyright protection. It will clearly inform the user that the resource is subjected to copyright.

How to write a copyright notice?

It is easy to write a copyright notice on your website. A copyright notice should include the below parts.

1) The Copyright Symbol

2) The Year of the Creation

3) The Name of the Author

4) A Rights Statement

The copyright symbol is the same as we’ve seen earlier. It is the capital C inside a circle “©”. If you are using HTML to write your pages, you could use “©” to display the copyright symbol. In Windows, you could write the © with “alt+0169” and in Mac, Option+G.

The next is the year of creation. This is the year when you are publishing your work. If your blog covers several years, you could declare a range of years, For example, 2007-2011. A surprising fact is that for most of the CMS’ like WordPress, it is possible to update the year or range of years automatically.

The name of the author is your name. You could use your name or whatever you use to identify yourself. This name should designate who the copyright holder is.

And at last, the Rights statement is the phrase “All rights reserved”. You could use different phrases like “All rights reserved”, “Some rights reserved,” and “No rights reserved”. You can see InterServer copyright statement in the footer as an example: Copyright © 2018 – All Rights Reserved.

If you have any questions or queries regarding this article, Please comment down in the comment section. We will reply with the solution or more information as soon as possible.

2 Responses to “How to write a copyright notice for your website?”

  1. Melvin Davenport says:

    I hope the support link will offer more in the way of support.

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