Re: d/copyright years when upstream does not use years?

Walter Landry <[email protected]> writes:
> Peter Pentchev <[email protected]> writes:

>> So IMHO there are both good and bad things in copyright notices that
>> do not include years:
>> - good thing: you don't need to update it each year, and it does not
>>   get very, very long as you skip a year every now and then :)
>> - bad thing: it seems that, at least in the United States, such
>>   a copyright notice may not be recognized in court

> Copyright attaches even if you do not have a copyright notice.  A year
> makes it more clear when it applies, so enforcement gets easier if you
> can point to it.

In US law specifically, you have to have a copyright notice to claim
statutory damages, which in practice often means that claiming damages is
effectively impossible without a copyright notice. (My understanding is
that you would then have to prove actual harm, which is expensive and
difficult.)

But there is no legal requirement to have a copyright notice, and upstream
is entitled to not have one if they don't want to have one. That's not
something Debian gets to decide for upstream. I think our obligation under
the license (and just in general as good citizens) is to reproduce
whatever notice upstream uses, even if it's not a legal copyright notice
under US law. If upstream doesn't use such a notice, or omits some
customary part of it like the years, I'm kind of dubious about us
inventing one, and I'm not sure what would require us to do so.