Inserting the Copyright sign is not IMO a good reason Right, definitely not. In practice, the copyright sign should simply not be used in source files. The word "Copyright" is the way to go.
The three characters "(C)" have no legal standing as far as I know (e.g., when I look at the US Library of Congress documents describing copyright or Berne treaty descriptions, it doesn't say anything about "(C)", just "Copyright" and the copyright symbol), despite their widespread use. It's harmless to have the "(C)", we don't have to go around systematically eradicating it, but it's also meaningless. By some kind of coincidence, a few days ago I sent a patch clarifying this point to rms; we'll see what he says. The current text is not good here, afaik. k
