Introduction
"Good Practice" is exactly what APEX, an online ethics organization is all about. Ethical behavior in our relationships with others and in the conduct of our business or activities on the Internet.
Practical Considerations
Copyright is a practical matter which APEX addresses. Through learning activities on their website. Articles and informed discussions. A membership who literally tries its best. To practice what it "preaches."
Following a Leader or By Example
Copyright statements which the APEX membership have developed. Are not necessarily the same. Because each member web site is unique. Expressing the individuality of the various members. Some members do not have copyright statements as such. Rather the basic elements of identifying what is "theirs, ours or mine" are laid out in Terms of Service (TOS), Terms of Use (TOU) and may be included in P3P policy. Rarely will you find the use of the copyright symbol for a whole web site.
Why Rarely Found
By placing the copyright notice on the work you have created, you eliminate the "innocent infringer defense" commonly used by those committing copyright infringement. With the copyright notice on the work, the "innocent infringer" can't argue that she or he had no idea that the work was copyrighted. This alone is a great reason to have the copyright notice on the work you have created.
Before you haphazardly place a copyright notice on your website, you should have a clear understanding of what exactly it is that you consider to be protected by copyright. There are many elements to a website, including but not limited to:
If you created everything on the site, you can be reasonably comfortable in your ownership. However, if you had someone else create text copy, or download some clip art, or used scanned photographs from your archives, or hired a web design firm to load all of your content into an attractive package, then you need to think a little harder.
For every item on your website, you need to have created it on your behalf, or have some mechanism to transfer the ownership to you. This may sound like a pain, but book publishers and movie producers have done this for years. Check the text; did you write it, or did someone? If you did, and you did not otherwise assign the rights to someone else, you're golden. But to be safe, it is good to have an employee agreement that explicitly assigns their work to you. If a third party did it, then you need to have an explicit contract that states that work was done as a work for hire. Otherwise, you merely get a license.
Again do not haphazardly place a copyright symbol on your whole website, while forgetting the DHTML code, java script, PHP script, guest books and so forth that you used with permission. Those were not created in all probability by yourself.
Copyright: 1986-2010