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by kube-system 79 days ago
> > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved.

> Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev

That's exactly what it should be then. A copyright notice lists the year of publication. Not the current year.

> A proper copyright notice consists of three elements: a © symbol, the year of publication, and the copyright owner’s name.

https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-copyright-notice/

1 comments

Yep. If you write

``` © <?=$currentYear?> Your Name ```

As many sites do, it may actually invalidate your copyright. You have to put all of the years when you made copyrightable edits to the page. A range like 2010-2025 is only allowed if every single year in that range is included.

This sounds like pseudolegal folklore (in the US at least). Do you have any actual examples where this affected a case?

In the US, you get copyright on your work automatically, with or without a label.

The only thing a label does in the US is defend against "innocent infringement" defenses. But even that defense doesn't absolve the other party from liability; you just can't recover as much.

There is no reason you can't have `(C) 200X-$currentYear Acme Inc` or whatever.

You're right that the notice is effectively useless for such web pages. And if it doesn't matter, then why bother to put anything?
Most people do so because everyone else does; it looks off if you don't see a copyright at the bottom of an otherwise professional site.
That doesn't look off.

What looks off is showing you don't know how copyright works by blindly putting the current year.

While this is certainly a creative way to interpret the copyright notice's date, I believe most people look at it as a "last updated" sort of thing.
1. Some people aren't up to date on copyright law. Before 1989 you did need to put a copyright notice to get copyright protection in the US

2. Copyright law varies in other countries

3. Many laypeople just cargo-cult legal tropes without understanding them