title: Putting Copyright Symbol into a Python File
body: <p>I need to include a copyright statement at the top of every Python source file I produce:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#   Copyright: © 2008 etc.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, when I then run such a file I get this message:</p>
  
  <p>SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xa9' in file MyFile.py on line 3, but no encoding declared; see <a href="http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html" rel="noreferrer">http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html</a> for details.</p>
  
  <p>Apparently Python isn't happy about the copyright symbol because it assumes the source file is all in ASCII. Either I need to make my first line be:</p>
  
  <pre><code># -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>to tell Python I'm using Latin encoding, or I can change the copyright statement to: </p>
  
  <pre><code>#   Copyright: \xa9 2008 etc.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which just possibly doesn't have the same legal standing.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a more elegant solution?</p>