Copyright notice to include year?

[Kevin Childress]

Looking for your thoughts about including the year with any copyright notice you might use. For example, "Copyright 2014 Kevin Childress Photography". It seems that I once read the year is used to denote the year the image was originally published (not created). And that date would never change, even if the image was republished at some point in the future, unless it was a derivitive work of the original. I'm not entirely sure what the phrase "published" implies. I mean, are we talking about published in magazine, books, etc? Or would uploading an image to Panoramio or one's own website also be considered as being "published"?

I don't anticipate being published in magazines, books, etc. So I'm really wondering if there is any value in denoting the year at all. My complete image collection has varying copyright statements embedded in the metadata. I am considering applying a consistent copyright statement to the entire collection in one fell swoop simply as "Copyright Kevin Childress Photography" with no year. I figure if I ever did get "published", I could manage individual copyright statements as one-off circumstances.

Ideas?

[© Tom Cooper]

My understanding of "published" is when it is made available (even to a limited audience) outside the creating organization or creator's immediate family (and in rare cases, also inside the organization).  I do not know if you emailed a single copy to me if that would be considered "published," but sending copies to 10 friends would.  Making it available on Panoramio would be a publication, but putting it on Google+ would depend on how it was shared.

 

About 25 years ago, I read an article by a photographer who took his copyright claim all the way to the US Supreme Court (and won).  The argument by the defendant (Playboy Magazine) was that because he had the image on his business card without a copyright notice, he was not entitled to damages (but was entitled to the $25 fee).  But the Supreme Court decided having an image on your business card was not a publication.  I would have come to the opposite conclusion - most people with their own business are trying to get their cards into anyone's hand who might become a customer/client, so not only would I have called it a publication, I would have called it a broadcast.

 

To my understanding, the year is only important regarding when the copyright expires, and even that can be irrelevant.  In the US, copyrights for work by individuals expire 70 years after the death of the author, so whether you include a date or not, the only date that will really matter is the one on your tombstone and the only people who are likely to care would be your grandchildren.  Works for hire (i.e. part of your job in the corporate world and owned by your employer) expire 120 years after creation or 95 years after first publication, whichever is shorter - still not on my radar, probably not yours either.

 

The first few paragraphs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication seem to suggest that sharing on-line with a very limited audience (i.e. immediate family) is not a publication, while making it available to the general public (Panoramio) is.  Reading that article (which is specific to the meaning of publication as it relates to copyright) might give more info than you ever wanted.

 

Of course, internet legal advice is always worth what you pay for it. :)

 

Tom

[David Humphreys ( formerly Galatas )]

Drat. Tom beat me to it :-)

Here ya go Kevin.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication

EDIT :  Not sure if this clarifies or muddies the waters :-)    http://asmp.org/tutorials/published-or-unpublished.html#.VADCxKOuTz0

[Kevin Childress]

Thanks Tom and Dave for the links. All that makes for real interesting reading, huh? :)   But the "publication" info does help open up some ideas. All that was news to me.

Tom Cooper wrote:

To my understanding, the year is only important regarding when the copyright expires ...

Guys, this give me an idea. I've read the info Tom provided about copyright terms/dates in the past. This is trivial but after reading that stuff again it occurred to me: I wonder if including the year in the copyright statement was spawned as a practice before digital/metadata was used so broadly. I mean, if one didn't include the year in the copyright statement, how would anyone else know when the image was born, etc.

Tom Cooper wrote: 

The first few paragraphs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication seem to suggest that sharing on-line with a very limited audience (i.e. immediate family) is not a publication, while making it available to the general public (Panoramio) is. 

Yeah, that's the way I interpreted it also. And that makes sense to me. 


I realize that metadata isn't a fail-safe. But I still find nothing that indicates what problems could arise from omitting the year in my copyright statement that is embedded in the metadata. Oh well ...