In hindsight, you’re correct Niko. I’d done the templates originally to have the year (via the gmdate()) be part of the copyright info in Settings.php so folks could elect to have/not have a copyright by just changing one setting. It is only used in footer.php.
I don’t tend to update the master Settings.php since it would be included in updates (via the updates.php) and people hate to redo all their customizations for that file.