On 2020-04-24 10:28:17 -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 09:57:59AM -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > > This is not completely accurate, at least under US law. If you keep a > > mix of old and new content, your copyright date may be a range of > > years instead of a single year. You will often see this in revised > > editions of old books, though the practice does seem to be less common > > recently. This is the case with Mutt, and we had this conversation > > when Thomas revised the copyright notices the first time someone > > pointed out they weren't current while he was maintainer. > > Some references: > > Australia > https://epiphany.law/articles/copyright/copyright-dates-single-year-or-range > International (only mentions websites and blogs explicitly) > https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-symbol-notice-year/ (International) > US > > https://danashultz.com/2013/10/09/copyright-notice-with-multiple-years-legitimate/ > > I can't quickly find a specific reference to site, but my recollection > is that the idea here is that a frequently-updated work has multiple > years of "first publication", and expressing the date as a range of > years is how you cover that.
https://danashultz.com/2013/10/09/copyright-notice-with-multiple-years-legitimate/ says that it is legitimate. But you are not obliged to provide years of the previous versions. My point is that such sets of years are ambiguous: you don't know what previous years cover exactly. Well, one could see them as purely informative, with no legal implications. BTW, I confirm that this is also done for books, even recent: The second edition of a book I have co-written has both years. The authors are not exactly the same for the two editions, but anyway, it is the publisher who owns the copyright, and it is the same one for both editions. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
