Hi Branden,
G. Branden Robinson wrote on Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 02:14:29PM -0400:
> Ratchet back the copyright year range, since no "legally significant"
> [ibid.] changes have been made to the file since 2021.
>
> (A question arises in my mind: if 15+ additive lines of "legally
> significant" change accumulate over a period of multiple years, which
> years, if any, should be added to the copyright notice?)
IANAL, but as far as i understand Copyright, the purpose of listing the
years is making it easier to figure out when the economic rights on
parts of the file in question expire, which is typically some number
of years after the death of the author or after creation or publication
(the numbers increasing directly proportional to Disney).
Consequently, constructing a rule that can be operationalized from
that goal, my recommendation is: list every year that satisfies
both of the following conditions:
1. The author in question changed the file in question in that
year at all, no matter how significantly or how creatively.
2. At least one of the following conditions hold:
a) The author's changes in that year alone were significant.
b) Both of the following conditions hold:
i) The cumulative changes by the author in that year
and all later years are significant.
ii) No later year appears in the list.
Rationale:
* If condition 1 does not hold, then nothing expires in that year.
* If condition 2.a holds, then something significant expires,
no matter what happens later.
* If condition 2.b.i does not hold, then something expires,
but it is not legally significant, not even when considering
changes cumulatively.
* If condition 2.b.ii does not hold, then sometime does expire
in that year, but only an insignificant amount, which is hardly
worth mentioning when other, significant parts of the file remain
copyrighted.
The same can be expressed equivalently as follows:
Cumulative changes spanning more than one calendar year only need
to be considered for the last number in the list, and only in the
case where the changes in the last year that had changes at all
were not significant when that last year is taken alone. In that
case, list the latest year satisfying the following condition: The
changes in that year, together with all changes in later years, are
significant.
Note that no part of this argument depends on the 15-line-rule, which,
IMHO, may be easy to check, but looks very unreliable in the legal
sense. All of this can be applied to any other measure of significance,
including to the rule "let a human judge the creativity" that i
typically use (and that, while admittedly less objective than the
15-line-rule, might have a better chance to stand up in court).
Finally, since Copyright expiry based on the death of the author
is more widespread and in most countries the year of creation
or publication matters only in some cases (typically, for anonymous
and pseudonymous works, and in some countries, collective works
or works made for hire, and varying specific categories of works
which usually don't include computer programs), stating the year
in which you plan to murder the author would arguably be more
relevant, in particular outside the United States.
Does that make sense to you?
Ingo
