Semantic HTML markup for a copyright notice

Question

When a web site is licensed under Creative Commons, I use the rel-license microformat. When a web site is licensed under regular copyright, I have a boring paragraph element.

<p id="copyright">&copy; 2008 Example Corporation</p>

That id attribute on there is just for CSS styling purposes. I'm wondering if there's some better way to markup a copyright notice that is more semantic. Is this a job for Dublin Core metadata? If so, how do I go about it? (I've never used Dublin Core before.)

Some web sites advocate using a meta tag in the head element:

<meta name="copyright" content="name of owner">

Which might be seen by search engines, but doesn't replace the user-visible notice on the page itself.

Answer 1

Thanks to Owen for pointing me in the direction of RDFa, I think I've got the solution now:

<div id="footer" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<p id="copyright" property="dc:rights">&copy;
  <span property="dc:dateCopyrighted">2008</span>
  <span property="dc:publisher">Example Corporation</span>
</p>
</div>

Depending on the situation, it might be better to use dc:creator instead of dc:publisher. From the Dublin Core web site:

If the Creator and Publisher are the same, do not repeat the name in the Publisher area. If the nature of the responsibility is ambiguous, the recommended practice is to use Publisher for organizations, and Creator for individuals. In cases of lesser or ambiguous responsibility, other than creation, use Contributor.

I will also be adding a meta tag to my head element for search engines that don't support RDFa yet.

<meta name="copyright" content="&copy; 2008 Example Corporation" />

Answer 2

Have you taken a look at RDFa? It was recently accepted as a W3C recommendation. I mention that just in case you want to take a look at other aspects of semantic structure it recommends. The licensing part is the same as the format you currently use. (So in that sense to answer your question, I think you're handling it correctly, assuming people adopt RDFa)

For lazy people who don't want to click links:

// RDFa recomendation and rel=license microformat
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">
  a Creative Commons License
</a>

Answer 3

Probably the most semantically correct way to mark it up is with a definition list.

<dl id="copyright">
    <dt title="Copyright">&copy;</dt>
    <dd>2008 Example Corporation</dd>
</dl>

Answer 4

Why not use the CC format, but indicate that no rights are granted?

In any case, the main problem with the use of the CC formats is that people do not clearly identify which elements of the webpage that they appear on they apply to.