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

On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 11:13:56AM -0500, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 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.)

This *used* to be true, but has no longer been true since March 1st,
1989.  You now have to have a registered copyright (which means you
have to file an application along with a copy of the work and a filing
fee to the US Copyright Office).  To qualify for statutory damages,
the copyright registration has to be filed (a) before the infringement
occurs, or (b) within 3 months of the publication of the work.

Without copyright registration, it's possible to claim actual damages
but it might be more difficult, especially where free or open software
is concerned.  On the other hand, you can demand that the infringer
stop distributing the work going forward, and if the work is burned
into in millions of dollars of televisions in warehouses or on the
shelves of Best Buy (for example), that might be sufficient leverage
to get them to agree to some kind of settlement short of going to
court.  This might also be enough to cause all future embedded Linux
developers to use Toybox instead of Busybox.  So.... yay?

This is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on
TV, nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night....  :-)

        	       	      	   - Ted