As seen in the RISKS FORUM

Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 21:01:17 -0800 (PST) From: David Glicksberg Subject: abcnews.com manually updates copyright year

Articles written during the first week or so of 2000 on abcnews.com have a misdated notice at the bottom of the page: "Copyright (C)1999 ABC News Internet Ventures." However, the dateline (which shows the place, month, and day, but usually omits the year) and the URL (which has an embedded date of the form YYMMDD) together clearly mark the article's date. One can still view articles exhibiting this glitch, for example:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/clone_cells000105.html

I notified abcnews.com Tech Support on January 6, and within several days, all new articles had the correct copyright year. This leads me to believe that abcnews.com may use a hardcoded copyright year, which someone forgot to update in a timely fashion.

I wonder how many programs and systems out there require manual year rollover ... in this case, the slipup was of little consequence.

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