Comments on: Copyright Notice: Is the Year Really Necessary?

By: Joey

Joey — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:41:49 +0000

If the copyright year is wrong, like the one for this says, “© 2007 contentious.com” just quoting, please don’t sue me.. well, it’s pretty much invalid I think. I love how Copyrights have a date to it.. well, a year but still a date.. (I’m such a moron) because I can know.. for example, a video game has “Copyright 2002″ on it. That lets me know what year it was made, so I can be astounded in 2009 and go all, “Wow, 2002.”

By: Rigan

Rigan — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:51:08 +0000

Hi,

I have a website created when it was 2007.we update the site after few days regularly.

So, should I update the copyright year when new new year comes?

Rigan.

By: james

james — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:04:56 +0000

sure they can dave. for your copyright, if the the year is wrong, would be invalid.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:14:01 +0000

“if the real year was 2007 but you wrote 2008, then the copyright is invalid. Anyone can walk off with your material”

That’s absurd and entirely incorrect. No one can “walk off with your material” just because you mis-type the year in your copyright notice.

By: james rappai

james rappai — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:20:23 +0000

Important point to note: If the year is wrong, and past the actual year, then the copyright is invalid. If it is before, it is okay. Meaning, if the real year was 2007 but you wrote 2008, then the copyright is invalid. Anyone can walk off with your material. If you wrote 2006 instead of 2007, then it is okay. The copyright is valid.

By: GinaM

GinaM — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:40:33 +0000

Older work required a copyright notice, new work does not. While your individual copyright will extend 70 years beyond your death, for corporations and work for hire, the term is 95 years from first publication or 125 years from creation, or something like that. For those works, the date does matter.

The year may also be required for protection in other countries. Under the Universal Copyright Convention, you are required to use the copyright symbol, not the word “copyright” or abbreviation “copr.” I have no clue what else that treaty does, but the notice seems to be important

If you’re going to use the notice, you might as well use the one that the law requires.

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:54:12 +0000

Thank you so much for the information. I was actually confused if I should update my year of publication every new calendar year. Now I know I can actually omit it totally!

By: Some Fool

Some Fool — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:46:12 +0000

The difference of an explicit notice lies in how easy it is to enforce because it’s harder to deny knowing the work was protected. If you’ve done that, you might not get ignored when you do send a letter to the lawyer on the other side. I also suspect that web spiders will distinguish expressly copyrighted materials. If you had no notice, would they balk at programmatically stealing everything you posted (after ignoring your robots.txt file)?

By: Joe Murphy

Joe Murphy — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:23:27 +0000

Amy, this is something that’s easy to automate. If you don’t want to automate with a the server-side script, you can use this snippet of javascript instead (just put the script tags around it):

var d = new Date(); document.write(d.getFullYear());

Whether a javascript-based copyright is enforceable is up for debate, I suppose.

By: John Cali

John Cali — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:28:47 +0000

Hi Amy,

I’m not a copyright expert, but I have done some research on it for a book I’m writing. As I understand it, you need the year with the copyright symbol because that determines how long your copyright lasts, regardless of when the original work was created. It would also determine when you should renew the copyright. However, renewal is now optional under Public Law 102-307, enacted June 26, 1992 — if your copyright was created between January 1, 1964 and December 31, 1977.

As with many federal laws, it gets convoluted and confusing. And I still don’t understand it clearly. Anyway, I hope that helps.

I love your newsletter and look forward to every issue — keep up the great work!

Best wishes,
John