17 days into 2019 and companies still haven't updated their copyright year | Hacker News Reader

17 days into 2019 and companies still haven't updated their copyright year

tomasmartty.com

19 pointstmartty22 comments

If you haven't updated the page since 2018, surely the page's copyright is from 2018 not 2019, and the copyright expires in 2018 + just short of forever instead of 2019 + just short of forever.

It seems like having an auto updating footer like this advocates would be the most mild form of fraud ever, or something.

A copyright declaration is supposed to contain the year of first publication, which is not always the current year. The fundamental premise of this article is wrong.

Is the copyright notice really something that matters anything?

And if so doesn't forward dating your copyright claim invalidate your claim? At least if you don't include a starting year.

> It has no legal effect

That's not quite correct in the US. A copyright notice may help you in the US if you sue someone for damages for infringing your copyright, by making it harder for them to prove that they are an "innocent infringer".

An "innocent infringer" is someone who did not know and had no reason to believe that they were infringing. If the defendant can prove that they are such (and they bear the burden of proof for this), it greatly reduces the lower bound on the range of damages the court can award.

Including a copyright notice nips that possibility in the bud [1]:

> If a notice of copyright in the form and position specified by this section appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such a defendant’s interposition of a defense based on innocent infringement in mitigation of actual or statutory damages, except as provided in the last sentence of section 504(c)(2).

(The exception is for some non-profits, libraries, public broadcasters, etc., in the case where they thought their use was fair use and turn out to be wrong, and allows reducing damages to $0 for them)

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/401

How in the world would the "innocent infringer" defense play out, considering that any and all copyrightable content is implicitly copyrighted at its conception? Especially considering that the declaration does not assist in distinguishing between copyrightable and non-copyrightable aspects within publication.

Saying that the user did not understand that content was copyrightable seems akin to claiming that they did not know stealing was wrong. It is the burden of the individual to know the laws they must follow, and not knowing them is not a valid defense to the best of my knowledge.

The U.S. has such a weird legal system.

It's 2019 and this site still isn't able to handle a bit of traffic from HN.

;)

Isn't this totally pointless anyway? Certainly under UK law there is no need to assert copyright in order to claim it.

There hasn't been a need for copyright declarations (in order to assert copyright) in U.S. law since 1989, either.

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/law-copyright-all-rights-reserved.html

On the other hand, it's a rather diminute investment, the benefit being that if you ever have to sue someone for infringement, you can unequivocally state that the infringer had been put on notice that the content was copyrighted, thereby helping your case. A meek help, true, but the benefits seem to far outweigh the "investment" of adding a copyright notice to a document.

is the javascript way of taking the client's year legally sound ?

No (but IANAL). Copyright protects creative expression. There is no creative expression in 2019 (or 2034 if the client is mis-configured) if the last edit to the input file(s) was in 2018.

No, as the declaration is not "current year" but "year of publication".

But, just remove the thing. It's not required.

but it makes my site look "professional"

I don't really understand listing a year in any case...

You really won't understand the convention that some people have of listing it in Roman numerals, then. (-:

you have to give credit to movies for that

Alternatively, just don’t list a year.

Or nothing at all. It's unnecessary per the Berne Copyright Convention.

If a lot of programmers are like me, then they list whatever the client pays them to list.

Of course, we can, and should suggest alternatives. But then they'd need to listen!

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