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On page 204 of Rick Miranda's Algebraic Curves and Riemann Surfaces, he talks about how the canonical map of a hyperelliptic curve is the double cover map composed with the Veronese map $\phi(x) = [1:x:\cdots:x^{g-1}]$. Then, he says:
the double covering map for a hyperelliptic curve of genus $g\ge 2$ is unique since is it the canonical map after all.
I don't understand what is meant by unique and how this follows from the discussion.
If $C$ is a hyperelliptic curve (with $g\ne 2$) then there is a map $\phi:C\to{\bf P}^1$ of degree $2$. (It has $2g$ ramification points.) This is the double cover.
How unique is it? If $\psi:C\to{\bf P}^1$ is another such map, then we can have $\psi\ne\phi$, but what we do have is $\psi=\theta\circ\phi$ where $\theta:{\bf P}^1\to{\bf P}^1$ is an automorphism (a fractional linear transformation). So the double cover is unique "up to automorphisms of ${\bf P}^1$",
