The Copyright Office website states that all you need to establish copyright on any item is to affix "Copyright 2002 Open Mind Media, Inc." or "(c)2002 Open Mind Media, Inc." (or whatever your company name is) onto the item.

The attorneys for premiere adult site http://www.danni.com have even decided that simply a logo label is probably sufficient without the copyright symbol, i.e. "Danni.com" on each image.

The general consensus is that labeling your creations with a copyright will be sufficient to take someone to court, as long as you have proof to back it up. (For example, model releases or photo-negatives.)

With this simple labeling, in court you will probably be able to get a verdict that requires the offender to immediately stop infringing your copyright.

However, if you've also registered your creation with the copyright office, then the judge will consider awarding you monetary damages and compensation... which you're going to want after going to all that time and expense to fight the offender!

If you don't have basic proof to back up your copyright claim, the judge may require you to register your copyright and then come back to court afterward. It currently takes more than 6 months for the copyright office to process a registration, so DO IT NOW in case you are going to need to take someone to court later!

Possession of negatives and model releases is essential. If you shoot on digital format and you don't save the original dated digital file of each image, you will have difficulty ever proving your copyright in court if you weren't the FIRST to register the copyright of those images at the copyright office. (A model release will not necessarily prove ownership of images if there's no proof which images were shot on that date! Other photographers possessing model releases from the same model, can easily appropriate your shot-on-digital images as their own if you haven't registered those images.)

Here's how to get your site registered.  It should only take you a few hours to prepare this!
 

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Go to the Copyright Office website at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ to print out the forms you'll submit with your site. If your website has any audio or video clips or files, print out form PA. (Also print out Circular 55 for your reference.)

(If you don't have any audio or video files on your site, check the website to see which form to use. If you're not sure, telephone the copyright office. They'll tell you, and the wait on hold is pretty short.)

With a multimedia item like a website, you have two options in sending your material:

1. Send the whole site burned onto CD (no 3" disks) along with a complete print-out of every page and image of the site.

2. If your site is too big to completely print out (most of ours are), send the whole site burned onto CD along with a print-out of 5 "representative" pages of the site. (Probably entry page, home page, main free page, main member menu, update page -- or similar.) If your site is too big to put on one CD, split it up onto multiple CDs, but be sure to label them all carefully.

For published works, the Copyright Office needs 2 complete copies of the work, so make 2 paks, each containing a full-site disk and 5 printed sample pages.

Your printed pages should have the correct background color, so if necessary, print with Microsoft Internet Explorer so that you can go into Explorer's options and click "print background color".

Write with permanent ink directly onto each CD (not onto its case):

TITLE OF WORK (for example, BEDROOMBONDAGE.COM)

AUTHOR NAME (for example, OPEN MIND MEDIA, INC.)

(C)1997, 2002 (first year of creation, comma, current year of registration if different)

I strongly recommend that the Author Name (owner of the copyright) match the name or company that you registered your domain to! Otherwise you may have problems later!

The form will ask the "nature of authorship". Describe objects, not actions. For instance you might write "words, images, mpeg video clips".

The form will ask for the first year that the creation of the work was completed. For your website this would probably be the year you registered your domain.

The form will also ask for the exact date of the first publication of this work. If you don't remember the exact date you first uploaded your site, I suggest you use the date that your domain was registered. You can find that info at http://www.register.com by typing in your domain there and clicking for full info. (Posting onto a website IS a form of publishing.)

Send the form, disks and printouts with payment (currently $30) to the copyright office. It's a good idea to Fed-Ex it (use the Fed-Ex website so that you can opt to have Fed-Ex send you an email confirmation when the package arrives at the Copyright Office). In the comment line on the mailing label, write "reg. [Site Name]" so that your records will show that you sent this website for registration.

The fact that your site changes and grows constantly will not hurt your copyright in a court case, as long as most of the site remains constant. Copyright law understands "works in progress". Just to keep things fairly current, though, it's recommended that you register an updated version once a year (by sending a new CD).

Finally, I suggest that you document the fact that this is a work in progress directly on your website -- so that that information will be on the CD you send to the copyright office. For an example see my BB site's record at: http://www.bedroombondage.com/readme.txt .