11–20 of 48 posts
Im not sure of the legal value of having a copyright footer - could anyone explain if it would actually stand up in a court of law?
TL;DR: Nobody knows. You're screwed.
Useful snippet. However I'd argue that in most cases it's deceiving to viewers of a site to tell them that content was recently changed or has been constantly changing when it's the same thing that's been there in the 90s.
I wonder if it is really needed to make a copyright claim. And even if so, wouldn't it make more sense to date it to its creation? If i am not mistaken, the duration until it would be invalidated is also based on the date of publishing it. Or some date after your death.
What format does everybody use in their footer? We use: © 2014 NodeSocket, LLC. Is providing all the years in business standard practice? © 2012-2014 NodeSocket, LLC.
Using the latest date may work against you, because someone else can show that they produced a work in 2013 with verifiable documents and if your documents say 2014, they will appear to have published earlier than you. If you're going to use a year, use the year the content was created.
© 2014 GitHub, Inc.
© 2014 DigitalOcean ™ Inc.
© 2014, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Facebook © 2014
Copyright © 2014 Tesla Motors, Inc. All rights reserved.
Well not unless you are worried about your copyright in 100 years.
You could have copyright 2001, that doesn't mean it expires 2002, or 2003 or even 2015.
Given that Disney characters and stories would come into public domain soon, you can also easily bet copyright will be extended for hundreds of years by Congress.
In 1976 Congress extended copyright to 50 years beyond the authors life. This means if you made your site in 2000 and you died today, the copyright would still be good until 2050. And you don't even need a notice for copyright in the USA, it is copyright unless stated otherwise by default.
These copyright notices are mostly-useless boilerplate anyway, but if you're going to have one, it should have specific, fixed dates, not dynamic ones as this site suggests [1]. As a thought experiment: if a date is not actually in the document, but is updated dynamically by the document, what legal purpose could it serve? It seems an exhibit with no more legal relevance than a pocket watch. [1] http://stackoverflow.…
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_notice
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p03_copyright_no...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using the latest date may work against you, because someone else can show that they produced a work in 2013 with verifiable documents and if your documents say 2014, they will appear to have published earlier than you. If you're going to use a year, use the year the content was created.
Interesting, huge companies seem to only use the current year: © 2014 GitHub, Inc. © 2014 DigitalOcean ™ Inc. © 2014, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Facebook © 2014 Copyright © 2014 Tesla Motors, Inc. All rights reserved. We leads me to believe it does not matter.