Can you blame him? That article is over a year old. The copyright date on chatterous.com is 2008. I don't understand how that kind of oversight could last for a year on an actively developed product.

Possibly because it is completely and totally irrelevant. You'd think half the startups on the web were closed if you went by copyright dates. It's one of those things you put there, then forget you ever put it there, and neither you nor anyone else ever even notices it.

And it doesn't matter. Farm Town said for months (and still probably does to this day) "Notify me when myr crops are ready." They misspelled a two letter word. Didn't stop them from getting 30m users. I'm guessing Chatterous's out of date copyright won't hold them back either.

I don't think it's a problem, but it is an oversight that would make people think the site isn't active. I don't think out of date copyrights are common on active sites after February.

By the way, technically if the text of your home page has not changed since you wrote it in 2008, it would be illegal for you to claim a copyright year of 2009.

Why? Because the date serves a purpose: so that people can know when your copyright expires and your content falls into the public domain. If you move up the date incorrectly, you are cheating the rest of the world.

As you can imagine, we are not that eager to copy your home page for free 75 years from now, but the law doesn't care.

No it wouldn't, there's no penalty for falsely claiming a copyright unless the copyright belongs to someone else.

Having a date and copyright symbol isn't required by the Berne convention, however it can impact the size of damages awarded in a copyright infringement case.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works.

"Copyright notice was required under the 1976 Copyright Act. This requirement was eliminated when the United States adhered to the Berne Convention, effective March 1, 1989." (First Hit on Google, 2009, p.1)

The copyright notice is unnecessary, but the grandparent is absolutely correct on how it works. The year is date of first publication. See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf.

Yeah I saw this as I had a chatterous chat room open in another window and was very confused.