I'm no intellectual property specialist either, but I think Patti is right. I think it's one of those nebulous things that the copyright law hasn't kept up with.

Last I checked, the copyright office did not even consider publication on the web to be "publishing" a work, so, for example, you can register images that you posted in 1996 by mailing a disc to the copyright office tomorrow, and still be entitled to the extra (statutory) infringement penalties for works registered before or within 6 months (or 1 year, whatever it is) of "publication" since they don't count the Web.

So... in that context, I don't think it really matters *what* the copyright date is for a static work. If it's a page originally put on the web in 2004 that you added content to in 2007, I would want to update the copyright notice, but in that case, I would say "Copyright 2004, 2007" rather than just replace the 2004 notice.

And as far as 2257, it makes no references to copyright date at all. The only reference is to "publication date" which has no bearing at all on copyright, except in physical print publications, where it starts the clock ticking for the copyright registration deadline to protect statutory penalties.