Charley,

From what I've learned from the copyright office in the U.S. government and a copyright attorney, simple statements are the best. My website of Orlando (FL) History has the following notice on the front page. Each and every page that has images and/or text on it also has the second part of the notice.

The content of this website is owned by Old Orlando Tours. All images and text on this site are the work of Thomas E. Cook & Old Orlando Tours unless otherwise noted.

Copyright © 2003 Thomas E. Cook
All rights reserved.

Beyond that, you can say that you might grant permission for use on other sites (but most people probably won't), and you can make some exhortation as to "please don't take my stuff and use it to make money." But it is legally not needed. The next step after putting your site up is to occasionally look throughout the 'net to see if any of your stuff is out there.

The good thing is that even without the above statements, your work is protected.

The bad thing is that that doesn't mean much unless you chose to hire a lawyer and bring suit.

But at least with the above statement, everyone will know that you do hold the rights.

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Side note: I discovered that the local history museum was using some of my images on their website. When I asked about this, they said that they thought that images of public buildings are "public domain" because anyone can take a picture of a building. It's scary when a government institution does not understand copyright law.

Remember that electronic media is just as copyrightable as physical media. And this includes the over-all design of websites.


pax yall