A Message to Online Poets
Stop putting a copyright symbol on your work
Read enough poetry online, and you will see a recurring trend. Many poets keep putting a copyright notice at the bottom of their poems, including the copyright symbol and the date. You’ll see this everywhere, from Facebook, to Instagram, and yes, even on Medium. It makes a person wonder, is this necessary? Should I be doing this myself? While I am just another writer on the internet and not in any way a lawyer or legal scholar, allow me to ease your mind.
The short answer to these questions is easy, it’s just NO. You do not have to include the symbol, you do not have to include a copyright notice, and in fact, doing so gives an impression that the writer lacks knowledge of copyright law and the publishing world. This is something you wish to avoid if your work is seen by someone who actually works in publishing. Editors and publishers take this as a bad sign, they take it to mean you are uninformed, and that you are inexperienced. You want to look like a professional. You don’t want to look like an amateur.
While there may be slight variations to copyright law, depending on the country of its origin, most creative work is protected by common law and copyright is assumed by its original creator the moment it is created. When you publicly share work, you are publishing it…
