Obtaining Copyrights

[jonathan lall]

Originally Posted by robot180

I know it's been a long time since I started this, but I still have not come to a conclusion about this. I noticed another team using a Creative Commons License, I think it was Woburn Robotics, and I asked about it and never got a response. I am wondering if that would legally protect work in the U.S. If that is not a good idea, then what is? How would one obtain a legal copyright? Do you have to submit something to the U.S. Pattent Office or something, or just use one of those websites for registering a copyright?

Also, what do other teams do with their sites? Do they copyright them and how?

Our site does use a Creative Commons License, and it does -- to a limited level of enforceability like any copyright -- protect our site's content. But I don't remember seeing your question anywhere... Did you ask via our Site Message System or our Ask188 feature a couple months back? A few glitches (that have since been dealt with) have made us lose some messages irreparably, but I see all of them that er, get through. Our bad on that one.

[Mike]

According to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, any object placed on the web is granted an automatic copyright to the author.

[robot180]

I read a little on the act and had trouble understanding it. I will assume then that anything uploaded to the web is automatically copyrighted, but I am not sure how accurate this statement is.

jonathan lall: I don't remember which method I used to contact you, but don't worry about it. I just mentioned that cause I know you used the Creative Commons. As I understand, your team is from Canada, unless I am thinking of another team, and are the laws there different where Creative Commons protects your site and not one from the U.S.? This is what I am researching.

[Greg Marra]

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure anything you create you automatically get a copyright on. It's usually a question of being able to prove you created it. Which is actually easier with computers and such.

[jonathan lall]

Well it's not just under Canadian law. Creative Commons is just as, if not more, binding in the United States. In both our countries however, certain website content is not automatically public domain as some might assume. A Creative Commons license is just a further affirmation (with a few stipulations) that under US/Canadian laws, and international treaty, no one can use what I make as his or her own. For the purposes of a website, this is probably more than enough I would say. The issue isn't really whether it's legal or not anyway; it is with how enforceable these laws are.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by robot180

I see that a lot of people, not just teams, but websites in general, say that the website is copyrighted but all they did was put the words copyright blah blah blah at the bottom of each page. As I understand, in order to have your website legally copyrighted, you have to send in copies of all of your source code and copies of every page. Does anyone know of anything else that you have to do? Also, is there an exact format for the copyright?

When its made its yours. End of story.

Honestly...I don't care if someone views my source code. All you'll get from it is basically the layout (which honestly really helps people learn HTML/JavaScript). And then of course anything created by PHP is just an absolute mess in the middle of the layout (since I don't use those nifty \n\r's for new lines. I'm more worried about people stealing my images. Images are what make or break a website, if someone steals them and you can prove its yours a website provider will often shut the site down or ask them to remove those images.

[Dan Zollman]

If you're concerned about more than one page of a website being copyrighted, things can be copyrighted as a collection.

Consider that national laws don't have much control over most things on the internet. Relying on laws to protect your web pages isn't enough.

Regardless of whether or not mailing something to yourself "works", it can still be proof that you had information before the postmark date.