Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

How can I prove authorship of content on a self-owned website?

I'm looking to publish original articles online. I own the domain name of the website I'm using, but I'm renting server space from a hosting company.

I'm concerned about proving authorship in case someone decides to steal my work and post it on a more popular website. It seems to me that the thief could just as easily accuse me of stealing. Webmasters have the power to modify their sites at any time, and they can label their articles with fake posting dates. Given those facts, I don't see how I could leave any concrete evidence of authorship when I self-publish articles online. Am I wrong about this?


Asked on 4/28/09, 4:52 am

2 Answers from Attorneys
Donald W. Hudspeth The Law Offices of Donald W. Hudspeth, P.C.

Re: How can I prove authorship of content on a self-owned website?

There are several archive services of varying degrees of thoroughness, including the Internet Archives (wayback machine) that index pages by date. This provides some proof of time of publication, if the page is allowed to be indexed. A more concrete way would be to copyright the webpage material, which we do. Webmasters may be able to label pages with fake posting dates, but can't backdate a copyright. We have handled a number of these matters and know how to deal with problems like this.

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Answered on 4/28/09, 2:03 pm
Keith E. Cooper Keith E. Cooper, Esq.

Re: How can I prove authorship of content on a self-owned website?

You should register your copyright in the website, which you can do at the copyright office online now. A copyright registration is considered legal evidence to a court that you are in fact the author of the material. Under its new system, the copyright office accepts electronic submissions, so you could upload your site.

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Answered on 4/28/09, 6:46 pm


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