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Comment on Ask HN: Is there any reason to display "Copyright © 20xx" on websites?

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I find it useful to know if the site is updated regularly.

The copyright year is generally when the work was first published. Even if the site is updated regularly the copyright notice should still stay the same. For example, I launched my website in 2009 and while it does get updated on a weekly basis, the copyright still says 2009.

I rate a sites age/last updated (And hence how useful it is) via the copyright, if it says 2009 I'll move on. I suspect may other people also do.

Unless you are in a strange place were there are legal issues, I'd keep it up to date, preferably with a dynamic year.

If you have legal issues, I'd add in a dynamic 'last updated' or range.

Are you serious?

I bet they are. I do it too, particularly if you're looking for something that has changed since a certain date. An explanation of a math technique probably hasn't changed since whenever it was posted, but if I'm looking for reviews on laptops, I don't want laptops from 2009.

I realize that date of publication of the particular article can be different from date of most recent publication, so I don't immediately throw out the site, but if it looks dormant I may leave and go to another site.

The practice then should be to put a range of years encompassing all updates, e.g., 2009-2013. If you didn't touch the site in a certain year, you'd include a list of ranges and/or specific years, e.g., 2007, 2009, 2011-2013

&copy; <?php echo date('Y'); ?>

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