Mic Drop…
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I’ve worked in publishing for about 45 years. It is certainly true that US copyright law isn’t easy to understand. The US is, and has been for a very long time, out of step with just about everyone else. It refused to sign the Berne Convention for over a hundred years. I think I’m right in saying that the US only allowed foreign works to receive copyright protection in 1891. That’s why Dickens had to tour the US to make any money from his US sales.
In the UK, not only is there no advantage to registering copyright, there is no way to do so. The presence or absence of a copyright notice is extremely unlikely to be relevant in a court case in the UK, but it could tip the balance if there were a lack of other evidence. The date in a copyright notice is largely irrelevant since the copyright term is determined by the date of the author’s death.
There is no doubt that any original text or illustrations in a web page are protected by copyright in the UK.
It’s a great Stack to be able to easily add dates to your page, even just to display today’s date for people, so it’s very useful for a whole range of things, not just copyright messages, and can save non-programmers time in getting dynamic date and time content on their page.
It is true that in the UK you don’t have to register copyright, it’s automatic if your creation is original, but it’s always worth reminding people when it was originated and that you are aware of it being an original work, as viewers all over the world can see your website and content, and may not be aware, and it also creates a distinction between sites which only have public domain content and information, or non copyrighted information such as facts or news.
So, I think it’s still worth adding to a site as a reminder to all viewers if you have original content, who owns it, and demonstrates that you care if someone else steals it.
In a UK court case it can be helpful as it removes the possibility of someone claiming they didn’t know it was copyrighted. All such information and notices all help for your cause.
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This.
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I used to put the code in the Footer Field in the General Settings Section of Rapid Weaver.
And you could extend to a range of course:
© 2011 - <script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> by Vess
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Thank you again, Michael, for your comprehensive explanation! Have a nice day!
Using document.write within your HTML is frowned upon. The reason is that it’s a render blocking function. It’s better to use the methods from my post above. If you don’t own my stacks, I even provide a small snippet to accomplish the same for copyright dates. This is non-render blocking.
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