It’s that time of year again: the "update your copyright footer" posts are rolling around. You know the layout — a year range like © Copyright 2007-2019 CSS-Tricks sitting somewhere in the page's final block.

I am emphatically not a lawyer, but the way I read it:

  • If you're concerned about copyrighting blog posts, you don't actually need that notice. In the United States, a post is copyrighted the moment it's published, notice or not. Registration is what enables you to sue for infringement.
  • There's a claim that the notice “deters” infringements — I don't buy it.
  • Another claim is that it might boost settlement amounts in a successful lawsuit. I have no idea where to start fact-checking that.

I usually skip it myself, but don't take that as legal advice. The practice feels more like a badge of tenure: “look how long we've been here.” If you're going to display that badge, an outdated date undermines it. A stale year makes the whole site look stale.

By all means, keep it automatic with something like <?php echo date("Y"); ?> or whatever suits your stack. Just mind the approach: I came across a site recommending an inline document.write() method in JavaScript. That's probably not catastrophic since it's only injecting a string, but it tends to be best avoided for solid technical reasons. I'd far sooner see server-side rendering or a pre-rendered value.