copyright year question

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 3/9/07, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:
> We had a question come up, as I was updating some copyright years in a
> few documents.  What is the proper practice for writing and maintaining
> years of copyright?  We have documents that may represent a
> work-in-time, and Websites that represent work-across-time.
>
> Should we only specify the years that new content was added to a body?
>
> Can we span years, e.g. "(c) 2003 - 2007", and have 2005 and 2006
> included?  Or do we need to enumerate specific years that content is
> added for it to be protected?  I.e., "(c) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007".
>

My memory from this is old.. but I think a document has to have the
date that significant changes made to it listed seperately. This is
definately where a lawyer versed in copyright come in because I only
remember this from a discussion on RH webpages back in 1998 and I
think he had to get an outside opinion.


> Should we update copyright for all documents to the current year, just
> in case?  Either by enumerating all intervening years or doing a span,
> whichever is proper.



>
> Does the copyright in the footer on a site cover all content?  Or should
> some content have individual copyright dates?  Or all content have only
> the dates they had content written, such as "(c) 2003, 2005, 2007"?
>

This was fuzzy back in 1998. It might have been clarified by now.

> Can we distill this to a set of questions for a lawyer?  Or do we have a
> practice we can use that covers us no matter what?
>

You should have a practice written out at some point. The reason is
that at some point as a corporate work, the copyright will end for
some parts of the document.. and someone will have to figure what
effect that remaining sentance that hasnt been changed in the year
2100 will have :).

> Regardless, I'd like us to set a practice and follow it across all our
> content publication areas, source code to documentation.  Do you agree?
>


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"