Re: Copyright question

[Tony Finch <dot@...>]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> To actually place something in the public domain, you need to _register_
> it as such I think.

No. For instance, when a work falls out of copyright decades after the
author's death, who is going to register it as such? Most western
countries do not have any registration requirements for copyright at all,
whether to assert it or renounce it.

Most jurisdictions don't have a formal concept of the public domain and
don't have any way for authors to renounce all their rights. This leads to
worries that simple public domain dedication might not be relied on by the
user to free them from legal risks. (In practice I doubt a court would
misinterpret such a declaration but I'm not a lawyer.) This is why the
Creative Commons Zero ("no rights reserved") licence exists, to express
the concept of a public domain dedication in a way that doesn't rely on
legal concepts peculiar to the United States.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ

Tony.
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