Please can we have some common sense!

[ScriptMaster]

I've just had an article rejected because I included a copyright notice at the end, with the rejection message saying that the license type determines the copyright.

1. Unless the customer purchases full rights, I own the copyright on my work. The only way I can claim copyright is by putting the claim in the article. Under the terms of full rights licensing, a customer who buys full rights is free to remove the copyright notice.

2. Every article I have submitted has had my copyright notice included, so why is it a problem now?

3. I have sold just one article via CC with usage rights. The article was published with my copyright notice removed. Clearly, customers are not too concerned about applying CC's licensing policy.

4. Here's where the common sense comes in. No customers are going to object to an author claiming copyright, because they know they can legitimately delete the claim when they buy full rights. Equally, they know that without full rights, the copyright remains with the author. So why does CC have any problem with a copyright claim?

[SJHillman]

I can't say as far as including the notice goes, but as far as clients using the article goes they have to follow the licensing and either CC's support will help you or you can file a DMCA claim yourself. To complicate matters, copyright is for creative works and the notice itself may not be covered as part of the creative work (the article itself).

Personally, I omit the copyright notice as you do not need it to claim copyright any more than you need to register the copyright with your government. The copyright is effectively created the second the work is enough to satisfy some rather broad criteria, such as being unique and of a creative nature. A notice may help to prove that it's yours in some cases, but in general it's not going to help a whole lot. You're much better off with a byline for name recognition but otherwise I wouldn't bother with a notice.

[ScriptMaster]

Thanks for the reply.

Just to make it clear - I am not really bothered about the copyright claim being removed from the sold article, and it is certainly not an issue I want to take up with CC or anybody else. I merely mentioned it as an example of what happens in the real world. I am sure had it been a byline rather than a copyright notice, it would still have disappeared.

My point is that copyright notices are not something that buyers object to, so it is extremely frustrating to have an article rejected for something as pedantic as this.

[jak]

Note - we only retain copyright on articles sold for usage, not unique rights.

[SJHillman]

We still retain the copyright when selling for unique rights. However, part of the sale is an agreement that we won't let anyone else license our copyright. If we didn't retain the copyright, then clients would be free to do whatever they want with the article, up to and including taking credit for it.

[jak]

OK. That makes sense. I thought you were referring to having the right to do something else with it