Is Website a Property/Asset?

Can a website be called as an asset?

[sandyjain]

Hi everyone...
I have a few quieries....

1) Can a website be considered to be an Asset? I mean, can it be added to the net wealth held by a person? I need to show my assets (land, liquid funds) to obtain a certain country's Visa... and i run about 3 websites which are quite popular as well.. can i should these as my assets? how to evaluate the worth of a website so as to declare the value of the website in the Financial statements!

2)Will holding the Copyright certificate of my website help me in this?

3)Can any foreign national apply and obtain a copyright in the USA?

Any help or suggestion is welcome...

Regards
--
SandyJain

[benevolent001]

1) Can a website be considered to be an Asset? I mean, can it be added to the net wealth held by a person? I need to show my assets (land, liquid funds) to obtain a certain country's Visa... and i run about 3 websites which are quite popular as well.. can i should these as my assets? how to evaluate the worth of a website so as to declare the value of the website in the Financial statements!

Can you show the visa officer the earnings flow into your bank accounts due to these websites.

2)Will holding the Copyright certificate of my website help me in this?

As such no issues , are you considering to incorporate company?

3)Can any foreign national apply and obtain a copyright in the USA?

Yes

[jevgen]

1) You can. Just register it as online periodical with issn.org.
3) I believe copyright is international and naturally arises from the very fact of publication.

[sandyjain]

thanks for the prompt replies.....

yea... i can show the flow of funds into my account from Google Adsense... and yes, i am considering incorporating a company for tax benefits...

Could you lemme know about the charges involved in obtaining a US Copyright for a website? and btw, my site is a resource site and the content cant be clearly called as a periodical... is it worth obtaining an ISSN?

[BigDave]

I believe copyright is international and naturally arises from the very fact of publication.

Nope, copyright is national and governed by the specific laws of every nation. The reason that it seems international is that all the signitories of the Berne Convention honor each other's copyrights.

If you are from a Berne country, you have a US copyright already. Since it is copyrighted in that othere country, there is no need to register it to file a copyright action in the United States. The registration only *helps* United States copyright holders in their actions.

But I am assuming that you are just looking for a way to help document your assets for the Visa, not for any court action. In that case, it makes a lot of sense to register the copyright and obtain an official government document. Go to copyright.gov to find the information on how to do it. I think the current cost is $45.

[jtara]

We had this discussion here a couple of months ago. (Somebody was applying for a loan.) The short answer is "no" - a website is not an asset. Your servers are assets (rapidly-depleting ones...) if you own them.

I suggest you do a search and find the previous thread on the subject.