Not exactly. It has legal purposes - IANAL (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I believe it has to do with proving willful misuse (which matters somehow)

Not exactly. It has legal purposes - IANAL (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I believe it has to do with proving willful misuse (which matters somehow) and establishing a date of copyright. I believe that the idea is to put the earliest date of copyright, not the current year, which is a common practice.