Re: Implied vs. explicit copyright

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 11:28:56AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > The "(c)" version does *not* count as a C-in-a-circle,
> > so it's just meaningless extra stuff.
> 
> Precedent and jurisdiction, please.

A trivial web search brought up:
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?copyright

That's a nonofficial source.  But a brief web search will show you
that the same thing is repeated a gillion times.

The US Copyright office reports (at
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html)

that the notice should contain: the symbol C-in-a-circle, or the word
"Copyright", or the abbreviation "Copr.".  

C-in-parens is not C-in-circle.  There is no exception granted for
"doing the closest thing you can".  Indeed, it used to be that the
word "Copyright" was not sufficient; you *had* to use c-in-a-circle.
One reason that was changed was the increasing use of publishing
systems that couldn't do c-in-a-circle.

At http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.html you can see more rules,
for example, that there is such a thing as an "omission of notice" and
that certain kinds of errors are automatically considered the same as
outright omitting the notice entirely.  If there isn't the required
c-in-a-circle or the word Copyright, then it's not just a mere error,
it counts as an omission of the notice entirely.

So more to the point: there are many many references which say
"c-in-parens doesn't count", there is a reference which says what does
count, and it doesn't include c-in-parens, and there is a reference
which says that even trivial errors in certain parts of the notice
count as no notice at all.

Thomas