Copyright dates [Re: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™]
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@loopback0 said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Assuming the purpose of these copyright dates is to tell you when "lifetime + 7 trillion years" are over and it falls into public domain, isn't updating those dates without actually changing anything else essentially fraud?
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@topspin Not if the copyrights belong to a company. In this case, the countdown starts as soon as the thing is released.
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@topspin It depends on what they’re claiming copyright over. If it’s just a date in source files or on a static page - yes, that’s fraud. (But then, so are many of the DMCA requests filed by corporate America. Copyright fraud is their way of life now.)
If it’s a displayed date in a rendered dynamic page - that page is new content with a new copyright date, so it’s technically valid.
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@loopback0 said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I don't think that would be legal... I mean, it wouldn't change anything legally. In fact, I don't think that updating it just to change the copyright changes anything either. It's just easier, practically speaking, to push an update that just changes the copyright in the footer, rather than remembering to do it next time you push a real update. But technically, until you publish a creative update, you haven't created a new version that can be copyrighted separately from the old version. So if you did push an update that did nothing but change the "© 2018" to "© 2019", you haven't actually added any creative work that can be copyrighted anew (in fact, a computer could do it, because it's just linked to the current year changing), and it would technically be "wrong"... although not really in any way that matters practically.
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@brie You can be unfunny about copyright dates
https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/26084/copyright-dates-re-the-official-funny-stuff-thread/3
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@Unperverted-Vixen What if the only dynamic thing on the page is the copyright date?
Now, if you stopped updating the page but your dynamic copyright text kept up-to-date, then yes, the copyright date would be incorrect. I doubt that it would be considered "fraud", though, as it would be pretty hard to prove that you did it with any intent to deceive.
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@loopback0 Cool, I should've know that we'd have a thread for the pendants to go hang out.
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@brie said in Copyright dates [Re: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™]:
What if the only dynamic thing on the page is the copyright date?
The copyright displayed in the footer should be the copyright of the creative content of the page. If that hasn't changed, the copyright shouldn't be updated (and the date displayed should come from the date of the metadata related to the content, assuming a CMS).
The code of the page may have a different copyright in it, the copyright of any non-trivial part of the code of the page (as opposed to the content). Stuff like custom javascript and CSS would be a key to determining this sort of thing, and it's possible there will be different dates for different pieces (that have been mechanically combined). It also shouldn't be seen without looking at the page source, since that's the only time that the copyright could possibly be enforced anyway.
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@brie said in Copyright dates [Re: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™]:
@loopback0 Cool, I should've know that we'd have a thread for the pendants to go hang out.
Wait. We have a thread where s don't hang out?
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@dcon said in Copyright dates [Re: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™]:
@brie said in Copyright dates [Re: The Official Funny Stuff Thread™]:
@loopback0 Cool, I should've know that we'd have a thread for the pendants to go hang out.
Wait. We have a thread where s don't hang out?
No. That's what s do:
Middle English (denoting an architectural decoration projecting downwards): from Old French, literally ‘hanging’, present participle of the verb pendre, from Latin pendere.
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