While I’m usually amused by the copyright gaffes I see, I laughed out loud when I saw that Google News was still Copyright 2007 (thanks to dschwartz for the tip.)
Dear Mr. Google: It’s almost February 2008. Oh – and make the date a variable!
I guess I should be nice since I’m sure some of the companies I’ve funded haven’t fixed (or variable-ized) the copyright dates on their site.
A couple years ago Google's actual homepage (google.com) had an outdated copyright about a month into the new year. I emailed someone there, and they passed it on, and it was soon fixed. I should have received stock for that.
Comment by Sherwin N — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
You do realize that the only impact of having it wrong is that, 50 years from the copyright date the text enters the public domain, and so the loss is that instead it is 49 years? And in fact a few years ago they started extending copyrights so it's not clear that it will ever make a difference…
Comment by Dave — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
I would think that it would be illegal to update the copyright date unless the text or site itself had been updated, no? (The news articles displayed in Google's case isn't copyrightable by Google; so it'd need to be the actual site.)
Comment by Jeff P. — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
Sure, make it a variable – but don't forget about Y10K! How embarrassing would that be? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_problem
Comment by Tom Bartel — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
Actually, the copyright notice isn't even necessary anymore (and hasn't been since 1989 as part of the Berne Convention Implementation Act.
Comment by bfeld — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
I'm not entirely sure what they are copyrighting here – probably just generic "we must copyright all pages on the web" stuff.
Comment by bfeld — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am
Why, yes — I think you shamed me into this very same FeedBurner update a couple of years ago. We paid good money for a couple of premium ${var}s to spare future generations similar humiliation.
Comment by Matt Shobe — January 7, 2009 @ 1:55 am