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

User · Accepted Answer

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 "© 2000, 2010". Again, the added date establishes how far back the claim is made on the revision.

User · Answer

It is important to recognize that the copyright laws have changed and that for non-US sources  especially after the USA joining the Berne Convention on March 1  1989  copyright registration in not necessary for enforcement of a copyright notice  Here is a resum   quoted from the Cornell University Law School  copied on March 4  2015 from https   www law cornell edu wex copyright   Copyright copyright  an overview  The U S  Copyright Act  17 U S C       101 - 810  is Federal legislation enacted by Congress under its Constitutional grant of authority to protect the writings of authors  See U S  Constitution  Article I  Section 8  Changing technology has led to an ever expanding understanding of the word  writings   The Copyright Act now reaches architectural design  software  the graphic arts  motion pictures  and sound recordings  See    106  As of January 1  1978  all works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression and within the subject matter of copyright were deemed to fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Copyright Act regardless of whether the work was created before or after that date and whether published or unpublished  See    301  See also preemption   The owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to reproduce  distribute  perform  display  license  and to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work  See    106  The exclusive rights of the copyright owner are subject to limitation by the doctrine of  fair use   See    107  Fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism  comment  news reporting  teaching  scholarship  or research is not copyright infringement   To determine whether or not a particular use qualifies as fair use  courts apply a multi-factor balancing test  See    107   Copyright protection subsists in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression from which they can be perceived  reproduced  or otherwise communicated  either directly or with the aid of a machine or device  See    102  Copyright protection does not extend to any idea  procedure  process  system  method of operation  concept  principle  or discovery  For example  if a book is written describing a new system of bookkeeping  copyright protection only extends to the author s description of the bookkeeping system  it does not protect the system itself  See Baker v  Selden  101 U S  99  1879    According to the Copyright Act of 1976  registration of copyright is voluntary and may take place at any time during the term of protection  See    408   Although registration of a work with the Copyright Office is not a precondition for protection  an action for copyright infringement may not be commenced until the copyright has been formally registered with the Copyright Office  See    411   Deposit of copies with the Copyright Office for use by the Library of Congress is a separate requirement from registration  Failure to comply with the deposit requirement within three months of publication of the protected work may result in a civil fine  See    407  The Register of Copyrights may exempt certain categories of material from the deposit requirement   In 1989 the U S  joined the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works  In accordance with the requirements of the Berne Convention  notice is no longer a condition of protection for works published after March 1  1989  This change to the notice requirement applies only prospectively to copies of works publicly distributed after March 1  1989   The Berne Convention also modified the rule making copyright registration a precondition to commencing a lawsuit for infringement  For works originating from a Berne Convention country  an infringement action may be initiated without registering the work with the U S  Copyright Office   However  for works of U S  origin  registration prior to filing suit is still required   The federal agency charged with administering the act is the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress  See    701 of the act  Its regulations are found in Parts 201 - 204 of title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations

User · Answer

There is no reason at all for an individual to update the copyright year  because in the U S  and Europe the life of copyright is the life of the author plus 70 years  50 years in some other countries like Canada and Australia    Extending the date does not extend the copyright   This also applies when a page has multiple contributors none of which are corporations   As for corporations  Google doesn t update their copyright dates because they don t care whether some page they started in 1999 and updated this year falls into the public domain in 2094 or 2109   And if they don t  why should you    As a Googler  now an ex-Googler  I was told this was the policy for internal source code as well

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

[server-side] Do copyright dates need to be updated?

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