Setting for copyright text

Resolved Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 3 months ago

We would like to display a custom copyright text. At the moment this can only be done by overriding the default behavior in PHP. A more user-friendly and maintainable way would be to provide a theme settings screen where this is editable, as for example Elbee Elgee does.

Copyright law

Having the current year being automatically displayed in the copyright might cause trouble. A fundamental part for obtaining a copyright is the requirement of an original work. When a copyright is contested, the question is whether there was prior art that this work was based on.

Example: Person A posts an article in 2013. Person B copies it without permission to their blog during the same year. Year changes. Person A’s blog automatically generates the copyright date and states that the content is copyrighted from 2014 onwards. Person B’s blog doesn’t automatically update the copyright, and it shows that their identical content is copyrighted from 2013 onwards.

Copyright notices don’t have legal effect in themselves, but they can be misleading, which can have ramifications when trying to enforce one’s rights. When one is making a copyright claim it’s best to be accurate and at least not claim that the copyright is newer than it is.

Better defaults go only so far

A better automatic copyright notice would be from the site’s founding year to the current year. Of course, if site content wasn’t updated in 2014, there’s no basis to claim a copyright being obtained during 2013 to 2014. The only way to let users make accurate statements of their copyrights is by providing a manually editable field.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 3 months ago

Created core ticket #26776 to request a universal copyright setting in core. Unless that gets enough traction to be included in 3.9 in April 2014, I’d vouch for having this option in the plugin immediately. Using Elbee Elgee‘s code as an example the implementation should be straight-forward.

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 3 months ago

To clarify, what is claimed of the copyrights doesn’t have legal effects in most jurisdictions. You are entitled to copyright regardless of whether you display a copyright notice or not. It’s more a matter of displaying correct information in general, and can in some cases have practical consequences when you try to ask for infringing content to be taken down without a costly lawsuit.

Richard (theme author) replied “I’ll try to incorporate your suggestion into the next version.” Marking as resolved for now.
Theme Author Serene Themes
(@rlafranchi)

10 years, 3 months ago
You can now overwrite copyright text in v2.0.3 using the following:
```
function copyright_change($output) {
    $output = '© 2013, 2014-2016 My Copyright';
    return $output;
}
add_filter('cleanyetibasic_copyright', 'copyright_change', 1);
```
Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 3 months ago

Good work, thanks! Any thoughts on how far off would having this as a UI setting be? If it looms in the near future we’ll be glad to wait for that and avoid laying code for our current copyright area text.

Theme Author Serene Themes
(@rlafranchi)

10 years, 3 months ago

It may take a little while because I want to set it up properly so that I can easily add any other options in the future.

I like to set up options in the theme customize preview so that you can see changes before you save them. I know that others prefer to create a theme options menu on the dashboard. In general, do you know which method is preferred for theme options? What is your preference?

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 3 months ago

I am used to having options in a normal wp-admin panel with no preview. I always get surprised when I click through the wp-admin menu searching for an option and get taken into a completely different-looking preview screen. In my opinion this UI needs a bit more work. No menu entry should take you to a completely different screen than the others do.

Most options don’t benefit much from previewing, like copyright text. It could be useful, but right now I’d see it more important to make editing it be within the standard user interface, and then later consider if it could be also editable within the preview.

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 2 months ago

2.1.1 changed the default copyright text to show “© 0-2014 Sitename”. Apparently some issue with the code uses 0 instead of a proper year for starting the blog.

Marking this thread as unresolved while the issue is being inspected.
Theme Author Serene Themes
(@rlafranchi)

10 years, 2 months ago
Well here’s the code I used for the default copyright:
```
/*
* Copyright code, courtesy of Chip Bennett
* http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/14492/how-do-i-create-a-dynamically-updated-copyright-statement
*/
function cleanyetibasic_copyright() {
    global $wpdb;
    $copyright_dates = $wpdb->get_results("
        SELECT
            YEAR(min(post_date_gmt)) AS firstdate,
            YEAR(max(post_date_gmt)) AS lastdate
        FROM
            $wpdb->posts
        WHERE
            post_status = 'publish'
    ");
    $output = '';
    if($copyright_dates) {
        $copyright = "© " . $copyright_dates[0]->firstdate;
            if($copyright_dates[0]->firstdate != $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate) {
                $copyright .= '-' . $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate;
            }
        $output = $copyright;
        $output .= ' ' . get_bloginfo( 'name' );
    }
    return apply_filters( 'cleanyetibasic_copyright', $output);
}
```
The only thin I can think of is that somewhere you have post with a post_date_gmt YEAR of zero. Maybe you can check your database. I haven’t been able to replicate the problem.
Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 2 months ago
Thanks for that insight, Richard. Found several ones of those. Curiously all of them had their post_date set properly. I was able to fix the issue by excluding the zero date ones so that the WHERE section reads:
```
WHERE
    post_status    = 'publish' AND
    post_date_gmt != '0000-00-00 00:00:00'
```
Theme Author Serene Themes
(@rlafranchi)

10 years, 2 months ago

Looks good, I’ll add it in for the next version.

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 2 months ago

Nice to hear. Marking as resolved.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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