New Year? Update Your Copyright.

Do you know what year it is? But a quick check of copyrights for many blogs on the BoardingArea network reveals that many of you haven't yet completed your annual checklist of blog maintenance. Updating your copyright year is the task most often forgotten but we're here to remind you of that as well as give you some tips on automating it.

HAT TIP: A few of our blogs are still displaying 2019 copyrights and gave us the idea for this LEARN (you'll soon know who you are when you look at your blog footer... yuk, yuk). Factoid: only one blog of the top ten readership blogs on the network has the correct year's copyright in place.

Before we get into how to properly display that trusty © symbol, there’s one surprising thing you should know—displaying a copyright notice on your blog is unnecessary. The U.S. Copyright Office offers its “protection the moment [a work] is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” say what? It means that from the moment you publish something, it’s automatically protected by copyright, regardless if there is a “©” somewhere on the page—a fact that your screen-scraping friends apparently didn't get the memo about.

But having said that, the Copyright Office does recommend a registration notice should you require protection in a court of law or fight off those asinine screen scrapers. Displaying your copyright makes it more difficult for the infringing party to claim innocence.

The basics of copyright are that it protects your rights as the owner of any content, logos, images, and anything else on your blog. Yes, it includes those pictures you took of that seatmate putting their bare feet up on the bulkhead (likely also a candidate for an NFT!). As many of you know, content theft is constant on the web and by copyrighting your content you are giving yourself a certain level of protection, particularly if you should need to pursue the legal route of having your stolen blog posts or images removed from another website.

For that reason, it’s extremely important to have a copyright notice on every page of your site which is why the footer is the most likely place to display your copyright. Having a separate page explaining your copyright is really more complicated, not necessary, and as well leads to the #innocence defense. Honest Judge, I didn't see any copyright notice on the page and thought it was in the public domain, how was I to know?

Rules of Display

Let's talk about how to properly display the trusty © symbol on your blog. You have choices.

The four recommended ways to display your copyright are:

(Underline your blog name or operating business that owns the blog)

In doing so, there are a few stylistic rules to keep in mind:

Use “Copyright” or ©, but don't use both.
There is no period between the date and your blog name which is claiming the copyright.
You may want to opt to use a date range in the copyright notice thus protecting all content from when you started your blog. Copyrights that include the date help determine the restrictions on your content since protections last only a set period of time from the original copyright date. Using a single year would imply the first year of your blog's content (And as mentioned in the opening, I know that those blogs that show 2019 as their copyright has been around a lot longer!).

Future-Proofing

All that said above, who wants to worry about such a small detail every January 1, especially when we have technology capable of doing that labor for us? So let's look at future-proofing your copyright and putting this task behind you forever. You have several options: HTML, PHP snippet, or Javascript snippet. While there are technically plugins that can update this for you, fewer plugins are always better. the easiest suggestion is to simply add this HTML code to your footer which will make it a task to forget:

The basic copyright notice:

<p>© <script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> <u>BoardingArea</u> All Rights Reserved.</p><p>Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to <u>BoardingArea</u> with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.</p>

The copyright notice if you want a date range:

<p>© YEAR-<script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> <u>BoardingArea</u> All Rights Reserved.</p><p>Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to <u>BoardingArea</u> with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.</p>

The copyright notice if you want it centered:

<p style="text-align: center"> © YEAR-<script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> <u>BoardingArea</u> All Rights Reserved.</p><p>Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to <u>BoardingArea</u> with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.</p>

And to the rescue ...
Now, if you are truly busy writing the next best blog post e-v-e-r, and need help with this task, let us know on the helpdesk and we'll do this for you. #justsayin'