First of all, Happy New Year!
And, with the new year comes some annual maintenance that every webmaster should be conscious of. Here's a quick tip from my list of annual website maintenance.
Build Trust
Having your website reflect current and accurate information helps build trust. Yes, even the year beside your copyright notice makes a subtle, perhaps sub-conscious, impact on your visitors.
Be Relevant
Your website visitors expect you to be on top of the latest developments in the business and technology world.
Show You Care
For those websites that can make the change quickly, it shows your visitors that you care. Take a moment now to update your website's copyright year... or email your webmaster if they take care of this for you.
Search Engines Update Their Copyright Year
Let's take a look at how the search engines have done, shall we?
Yahoo!
MSN
Or, add a bit of code that displays the current year. Why do things manually if you can automate them? :)