May 28, 2008

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Dear {!firstname}:

Welcome to Your WEBSITE LAW ALERT by Chip Cooper and DigiContracts.com

Chip's Commentary:

Since the last newsletter, the Memphis In May World Championship BBQ Cooking Contest was held in Memphis, Tennessee, on the banks of the Mississippi River. Visit the website by clicking here.

My brother and I have been privileged to participate in this epic event as BBQ judges. For the first time in 8 years, due to a conflict, I'm sorry to say that we were not able to participate this year.

You wouldn't believe how great competition BBQ is ... it's so much better than what you typically get in a restaurant. Looking forward to participating again next year.

I hope you, your family, and friends turned out some great BBQ over the Memorial Day Weekend!

Recent Developments On The Litigation Front:

Last week, I was asked: "If there is some content on the web that I would like to take, and it doesn't have a copyright notice associated with it, then it's in the public domain, right?"

The short answer is "no" -- it's not necessarily in the public domain. For a discussion of why it's not in the public domain, click here.

To discourage others from "borrowing" your content, it's recommended that you stake your claim to ownership with a copyright notice.

The proper form of notice is: Copyright 2008 Chip Cooper - All rights reserved, where the year is the date of first publication, and the name is the copyright owner. The foregoing is well suited for works that are not revised continuously ... such as articles.

For websites, which are typically revised continuously, the recommended notice would be: Copyright 1996-2008 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved. My site has been on the web since 1996, so this date range indicates that revisions were made during each year in the range.

A good place for your site's copyright notice would be on a Legal page linked from your home page. For an example of my Legal page, click here.

It's also recommended that you place your copyright notice on each web page as a comment in your source code.

Comments From Digicontracts.com:

In keeping with the BBQ theme of this issue, I'd like to point out that there is a complete web page on the site dedicated to BBQ.

I give my personal opinions on cookers, rubs, sauce, smoke -- essentially most of the elements of great BBQ. And I've included a few recipes, too!

For all things BBQ, click here.

Regards,

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