Re: (c) does not equal "copyright"

[Hans Aberg]

On 18 Jul 2009, at 22:07, Graham Percival wrote:

> That said, in some jurisdictions you can get higher damages if
> you've included a "Copyright 20xx by blah".

There was an interesting example given about UK copyright law:

If somebody writes a letter to the Queen, she becomes the owner of  
that letter, but the the copyright belongs to the one who wrote it. So  
she does not have the right to redistribute that letter-material  
without consent from the copyright owner.

Anyway, that illustrates some principles of copyright. One is the  
copyright owner of whatever one writes, unless explicitly signed over.  
Companies cannot claim copyright ownership of material sent to them  
just because it was sent to them, just as one cannot do with a book  
sample. If a site claims copyright ownership of something because of a  
"click-wrap" agreement, ask them to provide proof that you were the  
clicker.

  Hans