A lot of websites, including some of my own, put that notice in the footer.<p>I do it just because everyone else does — but is there any actual advantage at all to doing so, or is it just "decorative"?
Fences make great neighbors, and while you don't legally need a copyright notice in the US for most purposes, putting one on there is a cheap investment in preventing accidental casual infringement and lets you skip the "Whoops I didn't realize copying that would be infringing" stage of the "Please knock that off" conversation.
There are some advantages to adding the copyright, but none of them are legal... sort of.<p>The way copyright law works isn't black and white - it's more like a harsh linear gradient where there is a lot of space of black and a lot of space of white, but a sliding scale between.<p>When you put the copyright explicitly on your site, you are making a statement - that the contents of the site are, indeed, unmistakably copyrighted and should not be reused without proper permissions (or at all, in most cases).<p>While you receive copyright implicitly by law in the US, the severity of possible legal action is partially dependent on what a judge says makes sense. For instance, one could easily (albeit ignorantly) make the accident that something on GitHub isn't copyrighted because GitHub hosts a ton of open source stuff. If the copyright is explicitly stated, for a person to copy it would portray a gross disregard, and lack of responsibility and due diligence.<p>So, yes, there are good reasons to place a copyright symbol, but it doesn't necessarily change your copyright status by law.
Why do you even want to reserve the copyright for your webpage's contents? Do you really care if people copy some of the text or source formatting of the site?
Well first off, if you don't have a copyright (which it doesn't sound like you do) - no, there's no purpose. A copyright is actual legal material which you have to apply for, just like a patent (<a href="http://www.copyright.gov/forms/" rel="nofollow">http://www.copyright.gov/forms/</a>). However whether this is worth it or not depends on the nature of what you're putting up online.<p>Now about the copyright symbol itself:<p><a href="http://inventors.about.com/od/copyrights/a/CopyrightNotice.htm" rel="nofollow">http://inventors.about.com/od/copyrights/a/CopyrightNotice.h...</a><p>"A copyright notice or copyright symbol is an identifier placed on copies of the work to inform the world of copyright ownership. While use of a copyright notice was once required as a condition of copyright protection, it is now optional. Use of the copyright notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require advance permission from, or registration with the Copyright Office."<p>"... in the event that a work is infringed, if a proper notice of copyright appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such a defendant's defense based on innocent infringement."