^{This information is meant to be only a guide and is not official copyright law.
Copyright and the Internet is still in a state of flux and many issues are not resolved.}
 

^{Copyright Notice}

^{It used to be that in order to be afforded any copyright protection, one needed to
put the world on notice by attaching a copyright notice to the work. While this is
copyrighted works in order to be eligible for certain types of damages. In the
copyright notice below, notice the four elements that include the copyright
symbol, the term "Copyright", the year of copyright, the name of the copyright
holder, and the phrase "All Rights Reserved".}
 

^{Click on an element in the copyright notice below.}

^{Copyright © 1995 P.J. Benedict O'Mahoney
All Rights Reserved}

^{Copyright Term}

^{The term "Copyright" is technically not required in the copyright notice.
However, it should be noted that the term "Copyright" may now be used in lieu
of the © Copyright Symbol in the U.S.}

^{Copyright Symbol}

^{The © Copyright Symbol is generally the standard identifier of a Copyright
Notice. This symbol is required in many foreign countries in order for copyright
protection to attach.}

^{However, in the United States, the term "Copyright" may now be used in lieu of
the Copyright Symbol. This makes notification on ASCII documents much
easier to accomplish.}

^{Special Note for Web Usage: Tom Neff, an astute reader of this Website, has
pointed out that HTML (both 2.0 and the imminent 3.0) uses the ISO 8879:1986
"Latin 1" character set by default, which includes the C-in-circle symbol at
position 169. In theory you are supposed to be able to use the numeric entity
reference © to display the C-in-circle. In practice, however, a number of
browsers (especially text-based ones like Lynx, operating via terminals using the
IBM PC character set, for example) will not properly display the C-in-circle on
screen in response to that entity. Furthermore, HTML 3.0 proposes to add a
symbolic © entity, and Netscape (of course) has had its own nonstandard
&copr; entity for a while.}

^{Consequently, the recommendation is that any Web copyright notice use BOTH
the numeric entity and the full word "Copyright" to avoid as many of these
problems as possible.}
 

^{Year of Publication
Whenever a Copyright Notice is given, it is required that the year of publication
be included in the notice.}
 

^{Name of Copyright Owner
The Copyright Notice must also include the name of the owner of the copyright.
The legal owner of the copyright is not necessarily the author or creator of the
work. Works created by employees in the course of their employment or
independent workers who sign "Work for Hire" agreements are considered to
be creating the work on behalf of the employer. Consequently, these works are
referred to as "Works for Hire", and the copyright is vested in the person doing
the hiring.
 As an example, news stories that you receive through a news service such as
ClariNet are generally copyrighted by the news provider, whether it be UPI,
Reuters or Associated Press. The reporters who actually write the stories are
generally working under Work for Hire agreements.}
 

 ^{Reservation of Rights
You can thank Bolivia and Honduras for this one. In order to gain copyright
protection in these countries, you must follow the requirements of the Buenos
Aires Convention. This Convention requires that the reservation of rights phrase
be included in the Copyright Notice in order for copyright protection to attach.}

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