4 ms·
©2008 Google Forgive my ignorance, but why don't companies program the copyright year to automatically update?
by kdommeyer 15y ago
©2008 Google
Forgive my ignorance, but why don't companies program the copyright year to automatically update?
- Animus7 15y agoBecause that would basically make the year meaningless.
- ars 15y agoThe year is supposed to be the first year the work was created. You can do 2008-2012 if you want though (and let the end year automatically update). But since that's the assumption if you don't include the end year, there isn't any reason to do it.
- kdommeyer 15y agoFacebook © 2012 The content of Facebook wasn't first created in 2012, so I'm not sure if you're correct. In fact, I've noticed that the majority of sites don't include a date-range. Regardless, thanks for the info.
- GreekOphion 15y agoDidn't Facebook just update their website thus having a new copy write?
- ars 15y agoNo, it's a mistake, they should have left the original date. If you update it you are supposed to do year, year, year or a range. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice
- kdommeyer 15y agoI still doubt that Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter, etc. are all mistaken in listing the current year in their copyright. That seems implausible.
- phillmv 15y agoThings aren't as cut and dry with legal traditions. I'm sure there are tons of scraps of legal language that remain in use only because it's traditional and few people know any better. Like some kind of legal shibboleth. Like coderdude said above[1], whenever you see "All Rights Reserved"[2] you're seeing it in action. 1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3541501 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3541501 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_rights_reserved http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_rights_reserved
- kdommeyer 15y agoI don't know. They might have; but I doubt Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter did as well. © 2012 Microsoft Copyright © 2012 Yahoo! Inc. © 2012 Twitter
- ars 15y agoI quote the US government: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html "and the year of first publication"
- kdommeyer 15y agoIt appears that you're correct, but I'm still having a hard time believing that the legal departments of almost every major company make the same mistake. That makes me think that there is something we're missing.
- benologist 15y agoThey could be counting the year it was rendered on your computer. That seems a bit wonky though.
- chc 15y agoI'm going to guess the missing thing is that the legal department wasn't the one that implemented the autoupdating date.
- hrktb 15y agoIANAL but for web pages, especialy dynamic ones, "the year of first publication" seems to be a flawed concept. You could as well say the page is first published everyday. About the presence of rogue engineers playing with copyright notices at will in big companies, some yahoo properties go through the hassle of manually updating the copyright notice every year under the explicit request from the legal department.
- 15y ago
- Terretta 15y agoThe page you're looking at was just created.
- notatoad 15y agowith the way copyright works, is the notice necessary at all? if you put the wrong date at the bottom of your website, it doesn't invalidate your copyright. i could put © 2047 at the bottom of my site if i wanted to.
- ugh 15y agoIt isn’t. Copyright is automatic.
- coderdude 15y agoCopyright is automatic where it is automatic. In the United States you don't need a copyright statement. Also, no matter where you're from, "all rights reserved" is meaningless (post-Berne Convention).
- tptacek 15y agoIt's (as I understand it) legally meaningless, but it's not "meaningless": it's a socially acceptable way to express the sentiment of "this is not open source or in any way something I am sharing with the public". Avoiding confusion is a good thing. It's like the opposite of a GPL COPYING file.