Copyrighting web content may seem complicated. You might be asking yourself, how can I copyright my site? Can I use the copyright symbol? What should my copyright notice look like? If this is you, then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will take a dive into the world of copyright and give you the needs to know for getting your copyright notice and more.
Anything sufficiently original that you create, whether that be the next big blockbuster screenplay, best-selling novel, or a blog post, is automatically protected by copyright law. This law protects your work from being used without your authorization or plagiarised allowing you to enforce your rights and in turn maintaining the lawful ownership of your work.
That being said, copyright applies to creative works, such as – typically – literature, music, film etc., but websites and blogs as such are not always necessarily eligible for copyright protection – rather the single elements used on them such as text, images, sounds, graphic etc. The website/blog as a whole is only eligible for copyright if it itself is the original and creative content rather than just a combination of single copyrightable elements (text, images, sounds, graphic etc.).
A copyright notice on your website, app, or blog informs users that your content is protected and copyrighted. While copyright notices are not required by law it is strongly recommended to have one in order to help protect your creative content.
Sounds good right? But…
This article is a part of our series on compliance for bloggers and web publishers. Read also:
In the US, copyright notices are usually as follows:
*All Rights Reserved. You keep all rights to your material.
No Rights Reserved. No personal copyright. You have ownership but it is not yours alone, meaning the rest of the world can have access. Please note that once you have published your work under a no-rights-reserved policy, there’s basically no way back.
For copyright in the EU:
In most countries, you don’t need to register as copyright is present to the author of any eligible creative work without the need for registration. Keep in mind, that in many countries (e.g. in EU member states), it’s not even possible to register copyrights, however, in the US you can additionally register with the copyright office, which may allow for an easier or broader enforcement of your rights.
💡Remember: never assume that your rights are the same in one country as they are in another, since copyright is territorial. Therefore, you’ll enjoy US-copyright when your work is being used (or infringed upon) in the US, UK-copyright if it’s being used (or infringed upon) in the UK, French copryight in France, Italian copyright in Italy, etc. etc.
Terms and Conditions are a document that protects the owner (that’s you!) by informing users on how to legally interact with your product, service, or content.
Sounds familiar?
Terms and Conditions are especially important for bloggers and website owners. T&C’s paint a clear picture to users about how they can use your services and content. As this is a legally binding declaration it is protecting your content from a copyright perspective as well as protecting you from potential liabilities.
If you:
You need to set Terms & Conditions.
Have no fear, here at iubenda we can help you easily generate and manage your T&Cs with our Terms and Conditions Generator:
The solution works for blogs, eCommerce, and even complex scenarios like marketplace and affiliate scenarios.
