Quoting Branden Robinson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Okay. I mostly concur with Don Armstrong's challenges to this, but I > have one more add.
IANAL, but, when I posted my analysis of the matter to the OSI license-discuss mailing list, OSI general counsel Larry Rosen replied "You've answered it beautifully. Give this guy a law degree!" (http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg06191.html) (Alas, that doesn't get me a law degree, but it means someone generally considered a well-informed copyright lawyer thinks I was on-target.) > In the U.S., copyrights are completely negotiable instruments. That is, > I can completely transfer my interest in them to another party (this is > not so much the case in droit d'auteur jurisdisctions). > > Surely anything that I can sell, or give away to another party under > contract, I can abandon altogether. Certainly you can abandon it. But that does not cause the _title_ to cease to exist. Remember: Public domain creative works are those whose copyright title has either lapsed, become invalid (pre-1978), or were non-copyrightable ab initio (e.g., creative works published or generated directly by the Federal government). There is a difference between a piece of property whose ownership is up for grabs and one that has ceased to exist. If it's not the latter, then it's not public domain (by definition). -- Cheers, The shortest distance between two puns is a straightline. Rick Moen [EMAIL PROTECTED]