Why the correct copyright on your website matters:

Hey friends, I saw a website designer post inaccurate info about copyright info on your website and want to clarify what the date should be in case you saw this too.  Your website should have a copyright ©️ date and the name of your business on the bottom of your website. This date should be the earliest publication of your website/blog, not the current year. 

If you have a website with original content, your content is automatically protected by copyright. This protection means that others can't lawfully use the original text, images, videos, or music on the site without your permission. If they do, you have a claim for copyright infringement.

As photographers, we should be updating our sites regularly which means when we update, we should also include the update year. So the copyright year should be: year published-current year or 2006-2023 (use your start year). This shows that you are currently still in business, actively updating your site and it protects all your content on your site since the beginning. If you only put the current year, you could run into legal issues so be sure to copyright the entire time you’ve been in business. 

What I love about formatting it this way is that clients can see how long you’ve been in business and get confirmation that you are still in business now.