do you have to buy your copyright for your website or is it given to you when you buy your hosting. Does it belong to you or is it still open to be taken.

I don't understand how you are using the term copyright. Any work is copyrighted upon creation to the person who made it. In most countries that is the end of it. If you forsee that you might hae to sue for damages within the USA you need to regoster copyright. However that, as far as I know, will only extend to any text or pictures you display. As far as I know actual html code is not a category you can register.

In some countries you have to go through a legal prodecure for getting ay copyright but in case of websites i think , if you made it then its yours.

Yeah but at the same time i have known people to have gotten their websites stolen under false pretense and there was nothing they could really do about it.

How do websites get stolen , i have heard that hosting company close down there service and in turn you loose your site , but that may not be called theft.

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Bloganywhere.org - Make Sense with blogging !!!
Freelance Web Designer

Actually I've heard of a software that can scan through a webiste and give you its total content and pictures... along with the html code. The only thing which doesn't work is if it has server side coding.

Another thing though, about your copyright. You have the rights to your website from the first moment you start working on it. Even if it is stollen you have proof that it is your work because you have the originals (pictures, psds and so on). Plus you have the creation date of your files which preceeds theirs.

Thats right , you can steal the server side code from internet , but sometimes people can hack into your server ad steal eveything , and it is quote offensie act

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Bloganywhere.org - Make Sense with blogging !!!
Freelance Web Designer

As far as im aware once something is created you have the copyright. Just keep the date and evidence of it etc. On the net its not to bad as it the computers automatically keep the date.

I have the impression that you needn't do anything extra to protect your work when it comes to a copyright. You have the evidence that you create a site simply because the date it was first published is recorded when you upload it. Many html editors will provide the date and the software used to create the page, as part of the comments in the code.