On Sat, 17 May 2014 09:57:06 +0100, Robert Kern wrote: > On 2014-05-17 02:07, Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> On Fri, 16 May 2014 14:46:23 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote: >> >>> At least in the US, there doesn't seem to be such a thing as "placing >>> a work into the public domain". The copyright holder can transfer >>> ownershipt to soembody else, but there is no "public domain" to which >>> ownership can be trasferred. >> >> That's factually incorrect. In the US, sufficiently old works, or works >> of a certain age that were not explicitly registered for copyright, are >> in the public domain. Under a wide range of circumstances, works >> created by the federal government go immediately into the public >> domain. > > There is such a thing as the public domain in the US, and there are > works in it, but there isn't really such a thing as "placing a work" > there voluntarily, as Grant says. A work either is or isn't in the > public domain. The author has no choice in the matter.
That's incorrect. http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html Here's the money quote, from the 9th Circuit Court: It is well settled that rights gained under the Copyright Act may be abandoned. But abandonment of a right must be manifested by some overt act indicating an intention to abandon that right. There's also this: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ which counts as an overt act. By the way, there's more info on US copyright terms here: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm although it doesn't specifically mention voluntarily abandonment of copyright. -- Steven D'Aprano http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list