Do copyright dates need to be updated?

Question

Every now and then I see a web site that has an old copyright date. In my mind, I always think "Look at the sucker who forgot to update his copyright year!" Then, while I was hard-coding a copyright year into the site I'm currently designing, it suddenly struck me:

How the hell am I going to remember to update this?

My immediate reaction was just to use some server-side coding to automatically display the current year. Bam, fixed.

Later, I began to ponder to myself, if someone as big and smart as Google can overlook this, perhaps there's something wrong in doing it this way. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I guess what I'm really wondering is why I feel compelled to keep the copyright year up to date. Is there a reason, or is my chronic OCD to blame?

If there is a good reason to keep them up to date, why don't more developers use server-side code? I see these "mistakes" all over the place.

Answer 1

Technically, you should update a copyright year only if you made contributions to the work during that year. So if your website hasn't been updated in a given year, there is no ground to touch the file just to update the year.

Answer 2

I don't think they are reprinting paper books each year. The copyright of the year when the book was printed is valid in all next years.

The same principle should apply to web pages, too. However "the year when website was created" is a bit different. So, if you make changes to your web site - you are not done yet. Hence, when updating the site, you may want to update the copyright year.

Answer 3

Copyright should be up to the date of publish.

So, if it's a static content (such as the Times article you linked to), it should probably be statically copyrighted.

If it's dynamically generated content, it should be copyrighted to the current year

Answer 4

Your OCD is to blame :)

You do not have to put anything about copyright on your page - copyright automatically applies until you explicitly license it otherwise. Copyright also applies for a preset number of years as determined by international treaties. I do not know what the exact number of years is, but it is a lot, so there is absolutely no point in updating the year in your copyright notice.

Answer 5

I think the question is, should we be putting 'copyright XYYZ' on all websites? Whats the point? Isn't it theft if someone copies the site without a copyright badge?

I've never understood this, but always had it requested to put up a copyright on the footer or the page.

Guess only a lawyer can clarify this one.

Answer 6

Not sure on the legal grounds but if you wanted to change the copyright year on a website in a few locations, you could add a field in a database or a flatfile that contains the year, and you just reference it where you need it?

It kind of defeats the point though if you have content that isn't updated

Answer 7

The copyright notice on a work establishes a claim to copyright. The date on the notice establishes how far back the claim is made. This means if you update the date, you are no longer claiming the copyright for the original date and that means if somebody has copied the work in the meantime and they claim its theirs on the ground that their publishing the copy was before your claim, then it will be difficult to establish who is the originator of the work.

Therefore, if the claim is based on common law copyright (not formally registered), then the date should be the date of first publication. If the claim is a registered copyright, then the date should be the date claimed in the registration. In cases where the work was substantially revised you may establish a new copyright claim to the revised work by adding another copyright notice with a newer date or by adding an additional date to the existing notice as in "(C) 2000, 2010". Again, the added date establishes how far back the claim is made on the revision.