Bug #59992 for Dist-Zilla: copyright_year only supports one year

Please provide a citation, from a reliable source, explaining that/why a range of years should be given. -- rjbs

On Aug 2, 2010, at 4:26, Ricardo Signes via RT wrote: Show quoted text
Well, it's either year of first publication or it's all the years. The Oppedahl Patent Law Firm says ( http://www.oppedahl.com/copyrights/#notice ): "The date. The copyright date is perhaps the most important trap for the unwary. One of the purposes of the copyright date, under U.S. copyright law, is to assist members of the public in identifying works which are so old that the copyrights have expired. To do this, a member of the public would take the copyright date appearing in the notice, add to it the number of years of the copyright term, and thereby arrive at a conclusion as to when the copyright would have expired. In the case of computer software, it is common place for the work to include original matter from many different dates including original work dating from any of several different years. Consider what would happen if the most recent year were the only year used in the notice. A member of the public would then be led to the conclusion that the entirety of the work is protected by copyright starting from that year and ending at the end of copyright term. But if part of the work dates from a previous year, then its term expires one year earlier than the rest of the work. This could mislead members of the public in the sense that they would incorrectly think that none of the work could be copied until the end of the term that is based on the date in the notice, when in fact part of the work would have entered the public domain one year earlier than the end of that term. There have been court cases where judges have stricken all of the copyright rights in a work due to such incorrect statements in the copyright notice. Because of this, it is wise to ensure that nothing in the copyright notice would mislead the public regarding the end of the copyright term. If only one year is to appear in a notice, it should be the oldest year, associated with the oldest of the matter in the work. In other words, if one must err it should be in the direction of omitting newer years, not older years. Another approach is to put a range of years. For example, if the oldest matter in the work dates from 1991 and if the newest matter dates from 1994, the notice might say copyright 1991 to 1994 and the name of the owner." The US copyright office just asks for "year of first publication". If you follow that, then the current default behavior of using the current year is wrong (as soon as the year changes even for new distributions): http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html#notice In http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf: "The year of first publication of the work. In the case of compilations or derivative works incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the compilation or derivative work is sufficient. The year date may be omitted where a pictorial, graphic, or sculp tural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or any useful article; [...]" However it also says: "The year of publication may determine the duration of copyright protection for anonymous and pseudonymous works (when the author’s identity is not revealed in the rec ords of the Copyright Office) and for works made for hire." However: The Apache notice policy asks for the "year(s) of distribution": http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html The gnu guidelines asks for explicitly spelling out each year: http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html University of California says: http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/crbasics.html "Insert the year the work was first published as well as any subsequent years when a modified version is published. Publication is defined in the Copyright Act as the distribution or offer of distribution of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending. If the work has not been offered for sale or transfer, it is not published." I think having all the years listed is to get the dual effect of "My stuff is older" and having the length of the copyright extend. - ask

Il Ven 05 Ago 2011 18:19:32, RWSTAUNER ha scritto: Show quoted text
Even though it might seem like a shameless plug, I'd suggest to take a look at Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CustomLicense.