Don Armstrong: > You should be able to find caselaw involving a case where a work was > improperly placed in the public domain (ie, the person dedicating it > to the public isn't the copyright holder,) but as the US system is a > law in action, you'll need to find a case where someone placed the > work into the public domain, and then withdrew that placement and > proceeded to sue people under it. > > That's a tall order.
Rick Moen: >That is _not_ necessary in order for the notion to be doubtful. It >pretty much suffices that no statutory mechanism whatsoever exists to >enact that intention, and for the outcome to be both indeterminate and >mostly likely jurisdiction-dependent. Have you heard of the common law? We don't need no stinkin' statutes. ;-) I assume you do not think that there are any common-law doctrines which would enact that intention either. But Don Armstrong has a point: nobody but the copyright holder has standing to sue. If a court was convinced that the copyright holder had lost his right to sue by making a public domain dedication, then effectively the work *would* be in the public domain. So you really have to believe that a court would listen to a copyright holder suing for copyright infringment on a work which he had dedicated to the public domain. Do you believe that? So, what do you recommend for someone who really *wants* to put something in the public domain? Such as, for instance, my web page http://twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html ? I haven't seen any common license which is good enough. If you really think that this is a serious problem, have you contacted Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org), who promote public domain dedication? >> What duties of ownership? [Well, at least post 1968.] > >Sundry warranty issues. No such thing. Warranties are incurred by distribution and stuff like that, not by ownership. >My point is that, in my experience, a claim that a package is "public >domain" has a high statistical correlation with title problems, which >people making derivative works must beware of. This is irrelevant to the situations I am thinking about (where the author is personally dedicating the work), so please answer my questions without regard to this issue. (I agree that this is a real issue, and personally pay attention to statements *by the author only* that the work has been put into the public domain.)