Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:24:51PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
> The Netherlands is one. Well, we do have a public domain, but it
> only contains works that by law have no copyright and works whose
> copyright has expired.
So what's wrong with a license like:
You may do anything with this work that you would with a work in the
public domain.
> _Probably_ a Dutch judge would treat the above statement as a
> license that means "do whatever you want", since he's supposed to
> reconstruct the intention of the author from such a vague statement.
> And "do whatever you want" seems the intention.
Yes, it is the intention. How about a license like:
Do whatever you want.
The only argument I have heard against this is that you (or your heirs)
may later say "Oh, but I didn't really mean *anything*." Which seems
silly to me, but perhaps that's why I'm a programmer and not a
lawyer. Is there a legal way to say "No, really, ANYTHING" without
resorting to listing all of the things (which can get quite long)?
> But would <name> ever bring a lawsuit asserting copyright infringement?
It seems like it's not possible to prevent the author from bringing a
suit at all (even with a public domain dedication). However, you can
ideally make the suit trivially lose-able with a sufficient license.
-Peff
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