Copyright Notice: Is the Year Really Necessary?

Here’s something I don’t get, and I’d love it if someone well versed in US copyright law could explain it to me: Why must a copyright notice include a year? Especially if no notice is required for copyright protection?

Having to assign a year to a copyright notice makes things rather confusing in online media. For instance, In a blog or any other site where fresh content regularly appears, there typically is a date assigned to each item (at least in the metadata, if not displayed). But then… there generally is a visible copyright notice that appears throughout the site and is managed by a template. So if you look up archived content from previous years, you’ll view the older content on a page that bears the copyright notice for the current year.

That doesn’t make much sense to me…

My colleague Steve Outing recently reminded his readers to update the year in their online copyright notice. This made me wonder whether a year is really a legal requirement. So I looked it up. Here’s what the US Copyright Office says:

Visually Perceptible Copies

The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain three elements. They should appear together or in close proximity on the copies. The elements are:

The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright,�? or the abbreviation “Copr.�?; and
The year of first publication. If the work is a derivative work or a compilation incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the derivative work or compilation is sufficient. Examples of derivative works are translations or dramatizations; an example of a compilation is an anthology. The year may be omitted when a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or useful articles; and
The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner. Example: © 2004 Jane Doe

However, the Copyright Office also says that any work of intellectual property is automatically considered copyrighted from the moment it is created. Therefore, no notice or registration is necessary in order to claim copyright for a work:

“No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. …Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is ‘created’ when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. ‘Copies’ are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

So: Considering that the web is a medium that allows a work to be visually perceived “with the aid of a machine or device” (a computer, Blackberry, etc.), I gather that publication to the web — or even just saving a word processing file — constitutes “creation” of a valid copyrighted work.

…Yes, it’s true that registering your copyright helps a lot if you want to actually be able to legally defend your copyright. But even the government acknowledges that this is a legal formality, not a prerequisite for copyright protection.

Seems to me that this is a case where, once again, media-related law has fallen drastically behind the current state of media.

This is why my copyright notice for this site (see the right-hand sidebar of any page on Contentious) does not include a year. I don’t know whether that makes my notice “invalid” in any legal sense — but since my copyright protection doesn’t require a notice, then so what? Every item I post to this blog is displayed with the date of publication. I figure, that’s enough to clarify the date issue.

Even better: A dateless copyright notice means I have one less picky task to perform every January.

What do you think of this approach? Please comment below.

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This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on January 7, 2007 at 6:07 pm and filed under Amy's Adventures, Labels and Metadata, Media Musings, Voices: Blogs, etc.. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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8 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

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.

[Reply]

1. GinaM on September 22nd, 2008 at 10:40 am
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!

[Reply]

2. Cynthia on September 19th, 2007 at 6:54 am
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)?

[Reply]

3. Some Fool on April 6th, 2007 at 2:46 am
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.

[Reply]

4. Joe Murphy on January 11th, 2007 at 1:23 am
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

[Reply]

5. John Cali on January 9th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Amy,

I take an interest in copyright, though that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily a reliable source. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from replying to the two parts of your question:

Registration is not simply a formality. As the Copyright Office says, it puts the facts on the public record, may enable you to collect statutory damages and attorney fees in a dispute, and can (if done within 5 years of publication) serve as prima facie evidence in court.

(If I understand that last, then the infringer would have a much higher barrier in order to prove non-infringement or prior creation.)

Regarding the inclusion of the year, the “form” of copyright requires three elements (the symbol or word “copyright,” the year, the owner of the copyright”). (Under the Universal Copyright Convention, you should use the copyright symbol and not the word copyright to guarantee protection in all UCC member countries.)

To fail to include the year, in the opinion of someone who’s not an intellectual-property lawyer, is to risk losing your protection on a technicality, like not having your tax form postmarked by April 15th. It’s not that hard to follow the form.

Your own work is protected for your lifetime plus 70 years. You needn’t worry about whether someone sees a two-year-old post. Even if the year in the notice is off by two years, you’re covered till you’ve been dead 68 years, by which time you’ll feel less stressed about ownership.

[Reply]

6. Dave F. on January 8th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
V. good question, and I can hardly wait to read the answer!

I, too, advised clients to update their copyright year, but I didn’t do it from a legal perspective — just a marketing one. My marketing intention of updating the copyright YEAR is to increase the trust factor — it says the site is still alive (albeit, since the first of the year.)

But in Web 2.0-land, I find myself looking for frequent updates and changes, anyway. A current copyright year just tells me that the site is still alive…but little else. Today, blogs are date-stamped, so is the copyright YEAR a thing of the past?

BTW, the static sales sites are going to dry up pretty soon. Why have a static sales microsite when you can build a site on the free WordPress platform: and gain better visibility on the search engines, get feedback on your site and products, get reviewed, etc.

Viewed from a Web 2.0 marketing perspective (and not legal), merely updating the copyright YEAR seems feeble, indeed.

[Reply]

7. Laura Bergells on January 8th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I suppose the idea is that printing the year of first publication helps one determine when the copyright in that work will expire. However, it makes less sense now that copyright runs for such a ridiculously long time and its expiration (in the case of an individual rather than a corporate author) is keyed to when the original author died.

[Reply]

8. Tim Hadley on January 7th, 2007 at 8:44 pm