It's Almost 2015. Update Your Footer (opens in new tab)

These copyright notices are mostly-useless boilerplate anyway, but if you're going to have one, it should have specific, fixed dates, not dynamic ones as this site suggests [1].

As a thought experiment: if a date is not actually in the document, but is updated dynamically by the document, what legal purpose could it serve? It seems an exhibit with no more legal relevance than a pocket watch.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/2391555/4323

Please note: Copyright notices are not required, they are only used out of habit, ignorance, or as a mild deterrent.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p03_copyright_no...

Useful snippet. However I'd argue that in most cases it's deceiving to viewers of a site to tell them that content was recently changed or has been constantly changing when it's the same thing that's been there in the 90s.

This is not how copyright works. One of the biggest misconceptions on the web.

Well not unless you are worried about your copyright in 100 years.

You could have copyright 2001, that doesn't mean it expires 2002, or 2003 or even 2015.

Given that Disney characters and stories would come into public domain soon, you can also easily bet copyright will be extended for hundreds of years by Congress.

In 1976 Congress extended copyright to 50 years beyond the authors life. This means if you made your site in 2000 and you died today, the copyright would still be good until 2050. And you don't even need a notice for copyright in the USA, it is copyright unless stated otherwise by default.

A copyright notice like this on a webpage does not serve to assert your claim to the copyrights of the page. You get those automatically. They serve to assist third parties that are trying to find the copyright holder.

If I find an awesome poem published on a website and I'd like to use it, I have to find the copyright holder. The notice tells me; when (roughly) the poem was written, and who it was written by. I can then find the correct people and hopefully obtain a license.

In 50+ years the notice might tell me that the work is likely to be in the public domain. It won't tell me for sure, but it would be an indicator.

A date range tells me that the poem has been altered over the years. It was first written in X and last altered in Y. You certainly don't want a copyright notice that simply updates to the current year. You're then misleading any person who might be trying to find you. As has been mentioned before, putting an incorrect date would not change your actual copyrights.

I'm currently part of a project (in the UK) looking to simplify the rights processes (focussing on video atm). I've been to several meetings with copyright lawyers and attended some copyright workshops. IANAL though, I just know some.

Im not sure of the legal value of having a copyright footer - could anyone explain if it would actually stand up in a court of law?

It's also helpful to put a date somewhere obvious on all pages, especially blog postings and the like.

Readers will thank you that they aren't forced to scan the whole page to see whether what they're reading is recent or not.

Why do we need this in the footer at all?

At the bottom of the article it says "No-© Update Your Footer Disclaimer: this is neither a vote for nor a vote against content copyrights." Stating "No-©" does not put your content into the public domain. It's meaningless tripe. The disclaimer following that just demonstrates the authors ignorance and unwillingness to learn as they imply some recognition that this is odd.

I wonder if it is really needed to make a copyright claim. And even if so, wouldn't it make more sense to date it to its creation? If i am not mistaken, the duration until it would be invalidated is also based on the date of publishing it. Or some date after your death.

People are talking about how updating the date isn't legal unless something copyrightable has changed.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've been in meetings where management decided the year needs to update, so that's when I started using this snippet:

in ruby html.erb: <%= Time.now.year %>

For Django, just do {% now "Y" %} in your template to get dynamic year :D

What format does everybody use in their footer? We use:

   © 2014 NodeSocket, LLC.

Is providing all the years in business standard practice?

   © 2012-2014 NodeSocket, LLC.

Google does not show copyright notice or a year in their footer anymore.

I assume Google knows better and starting this year we are doing the same with our web site.

Are all of the dates within this site dynamic? If so that's genius as it will never need to be updated again unless APIs change.

I'm against using this because I use the footer year as a freshness indicator on a regular basis.

for jekyll > {{ site.time | date:"%Y" }}