Nah, it's not protected. You're probably just using the wrong box to do what you're trying to do or you've got magic quotes turned on or something so that PHPMyAdmin has a problem interpreting things.
Don't use the big SQL box where you can type commands. Instead, Browse the table, go to the row you want to change, and hit the 'Edit' link. When you 'append' your information, don't use apostrophes or quote marks.
Alternatively, just look in the code itself and where it calls the value for the copyright message, add your HTML afterwards. (Once the PHP code is done and it goes back into normal html.)
Dang this is hard to explain to a non-coder.
