copyright with or without a year

[Marzal]

This RSS Specification declares that

Should not include the word "Copyright", the © symbol, and/or a year.

while the pointed Official Docs has in the example

Copyright 2002, Spartanburg Herald-Journal

Is there any discussion or and explanation behind this recommendation?

Thanks in advance.

[CharlesWiltgen]

That seems to be at odds with U.S. Copyright Office recommendations, thanks for bringing it up! I'll hunt down the origin/originator and report back.

[Marzal]

Thanks!

Not that is a company that I love, but in case is useful, Apple seems to promote <copyright>&#xA9; 2020 John Doe</copyright> in [1] and <copyright>&#169; 2020 John Appleseed</copyright> in [2] or <copyright>Copyright 1995-2019 John John Appleseed</copyright> in [3]

[CharlesWiltgen]

Cool, that aligns with the kind of use I've seen and also U.S. Copyright Office recommendations, which are:

Copyright notice is a statement placed on […] a work to inform the public that a copyright owner is claiming ownership of it. A notice consists of three elements that generally appear as a single continuous statement:

• The copyright symbol © (or for phonorecords, the symbol ℗ ); the word “copyright”; or the abbreviation “copr.”; • The year of first publication of the work; and • The name of the copyright owner.

Since you brought this up, I've also been wondering about the use of the ℗ (sound recording copyright symbol) in the context of podcast audio, and also CC licenses.