[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

[Chad Perrin]

On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 03:27:56AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >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. 

Copyright isn't a property right.  The term "intellectual property" is a
form of colloquial shorthand rather than a legal term indicating actual
status as a form of "property".  I don't know whether this affects one's
ability (or inability) to pass something willfully into the public
domain, but it does affect the relevance of your statement to the
discussion at hand.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]