Alphax wrote:
Since I seem to kill every thread I post to, I'll end this one.
That's a bloody arrogant attitude.
I used {{MultiLicenseMinorPD}} until about 2 days ago, when I say the
following on it's talk page:
Because it's actually legally impossible to grant one's own works into the public domain in the U.S. and U.K., and this creates serious potential legal problems, I will deprecate this tag if there is no dissent for 4 days. Please see [[Wikipedia:You can't grant your work into the public domain]] for a full explanation along with some authoritative sources, including the U.S. Copyright Office. I have created the tags {{TextLicenseMinorFreeUse}}, which reflects the intent of this template. [[User:Dcoetzee|Deco]] 03:34, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As I read it (IANAL), you can't place your work into the public domain because:
Quoting yourself as an authority is a nice trick if you can get away with it.
Your statement that it is impossible to grant one's works into the public domain is patently false. Copyright is an intellectual property right, and it is fundamental to property rights that the owner have the right to dispose of his property in whatever manner he sees fit.
I looked at the page which you mentioned and the only thing that purports to be from the copyright office is a single unverifiable sentence from a letter received by User:Dcoetzee. It is completely out of contest. For that sentence to be credible one would need to see the entire letter, as well as the letter from the user showing the questions that he asked.
Any work receives copyright by default and copyright law generally doesn't provide any special means to "abandon" copyright so that a work can enter the public domain
While it's true that a work receives a copyright by default as a requirement of the Berne Convention, the absence of "special means is not a barrier to putting a work into the public domain.
Some claim that under many jurisdictions, a statement absolving a copyright or "granting" a work into the public domain has no legal effect whatsoever, and that the owner still retains all rights to the work not otherwise released. This person would then have the legal right to prosecute people who use the work under the false impression that it was in the public domain. It is certainly true that under some jurisdictions, it is impossible to release moral rights, though that is not the case in the United States.
Moral rights are another matter, and I realize that they are not a part of the US law on this. For the moment let's stick to US law. Once the situation there is clear it will be easier to consider the matter in the light of the law in other countries.
Please do one of two things: 1. Cite the section of US statute law which explicitly denies the right to abandon all one's rights in a work, or 2. Cite a judicial decision which has clearly denied a person's right to abandon his copyright.
In the absence of this I would conclude that you don't know what you're talking about.
*However*, you /can/ release things under a free-for-any-use licence, like {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}, {{NoRightsReserved}}, {{cc-sa}}, etc.
These are alternative ways of doing things.
(Hopes flame war will end now)
:-D
Ec