Updated Copyrights

Look at the big sites who haven't

[Kevin French]

Let's bet to see who is last to update their copyrights from the list below...lol

Its 2006, make sure you update your copyright statements.

I had this as #40 on my list of 50 things to do to improve your conversion rate in the following thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

It's amazing how many of the "big sites" are not on the ball with this.

So far, the following HAVE NOT:

1. Amazon
2. Google
3. Yahoo
4. MSN
5. ASK
6. buy
7. Microsoft
8. walmart (Still showing 2004)
9. apple
10. dell
11. circuit city

The following HAVE updated:

1. target
2. Best buy

Feel free to add to the list

[jdMorgan]

There's no need to do this unless you make a copyrightable addition to your content. The content which was created before the copyright registration date is still protected. Think books, where the printed copyright still applies whether that printed year has passed or not.

If you haven't registered a copyright, then this is academic, since all works published on the Web are copyrighted by default (by the DMCA under U.S. law) and by similar law in all other signatories to the WIPO treaties.

From a practical standpoint, the only reason to update your copyright notice on a page with no changes is to prevent copying by persons ignorant of the law who delude themselves by thinking that they can start copying any Web pages with non-updated notices at one minute after midnight on January 1st. The hardened scrapers will copy it regardless of any notice, so if the former group is important to your site, then it's rather easy to make a self-updating copyright notice using SSI, PHP, or the server-side scripting language of your choice.

Example SSI code for Apache:

<!--#config timefmt="%Y" -->
<p>Contents Copyright &copy; 1996-<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" --> Waldo's Widget Corp.</p>
<!--#config timefmt="%A, %d-%b-%Y %T %Z" -->

Jim

[jsinger]

A few years ago I made a point of seeing when the biggies changed their dates. Virtually none did it on New Years. Most took several weeks. Some, two months.

We change ours at midnight on New Year's Eve...a silly point of pride to be the first in our field to do so.

Displaying any year but the current one makes a site appear poorly maintained. If the date is more than two years old, shoppers may wonder whether the site is abandoned.

[BaseVinyl]

I work for a "biggie" site and we usually are unable to update the date specific parameter at the bottom of our pages due to the fact that we are tyically in the process of getting drunk with our friends during new years eve and so have little time to even contemplate such minutia! If it says 2002 or 2005 or even 2008,...does it matter when you are a "biggie"? Most of the unwashed can't even read the small print anyway!

[RailMan]

automating the date change is so easy ...... all mine switched to 2006 on the stroke of midnight, thanks to PHP ....

[jsinger]

Are there disadvantages to the "automatic" update method? Doesn't it depend on the client's computer clock? Why doesn't everyone do it that way? In fact, it seems that almost no one does.

OTOH doing it manually, as I do with SSI, makes the date Dependant on MY clock and my "condition" around midnight.

[robjones2]

There's no legal requirement to update the date, but it does have a marketing benefit of showing visitors that the site is not neglected/abandoned.

[ken_b]

I link to a lot of small business and enthusiast websites. The displayed copyright date is one of several things I look at when deciding to link or not.

[RailMan]

>>Are there disadvantages to the "automatic" update method?
can't think of any

>>Doesn't it depend on the client's computer clock?
with server side scripting, it depends on the server time

>>Why doesn't everyone do it that way?
add that to the list of the great unanswered questions, somewhere behind what is the meaning of life and why do men have nipples .......