How do I get the current year in the footer?
That happens because you are creating a custom block, but you didn't select PHP code as input format. 

In Drupal 7, you need to first enable the PHP module (php.module); in Drupal 6, you need to first enable the input format on admin/settings/filters. Once you have done that, you will be able to choose PHP code as input format, and write PHP code between &lt;?php ?&gt; tags; the code will be executed, and the output will be the content of the block.