Help me out here. What risks and flaws? If I as the copyright owner put
something into the public domain, what is the risk? Not that I will sue,
surely. Nor that it is not in the public domain.
The risk that someone will sue you for certain kinds of damages from using the software, under some theory that warranties not explicitly disclaimed are implied. Does a public domain work disclaim warranties? Can one toss viruses and software trash onto the public highways and thereby avoid responsibility for it? Or does that take a written license?
The risk that someone will attribute the work, or derivative works, to you in ways you don't deem polite.
And you can't use your work defensively to protect yourself from being sued for related copyright or patent matters.
The "flaws" that I refer to are the ambiguities and uncertainties facing your prospective licensees. They find software upon the public highways and don't know whether it includes patent rights, warranties, or other potential risks to them. Public domain software is inherently more an orphan than software that has parents that care for it and feed it regularly.
If you want to give away free licenses to all the rights that you have, I can show you simple ways to do so using open source licenses.
/Larry
(c) Copyright 2006 Lawrence Rosen. Licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0.
www.rosenlaw.com/AFL3.0.htm
Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, technology law offices
Stanford University School of Law, Lecturer in Law
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * fax: 707-485-1243
Author of "Open Source Licensing:
Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law"
(Prentice Hall 2004)
[Also available at www.rosenlaw.com]
From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
[mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 3:16 PM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: [CNI-(C)] Software Licensing Agreement
Help me out here. What risks and flaws? If I as the copyright owner put something into the public domain, what is the risk? Not that I will sue, surely. Nor that it is not in the public domain.
What flaw? That people will not know that it has been put into the public domain and therefore will not use it as if it were?
I guess I see no risk or flaw in simply relinquishing the copyright and putting the IP in the work in the public domain.
Steve
On Feb 6, 2006, at 4:40 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Some of us believe that a public domain disclaimer has some
risks and
flaws under current copyright law, which does not make any
provision
for such disclaimers.
There are always some individuals who claim that disclaiming intellectual property rights is not possible. That's their opinion. Until there is clear law or court case that it is not possible to disclaim intellectual property rights, their opinion is completely groundless.
Mr. Riolo,
You again misread my remarks. I did not use the word "impossible." I merely suggested that there are "risks and flaws under current copyright law."
Rather than suggest that people put their works into the public domain, you might want to grant a broad and effective license that can avoid those risks and flaws.
/Larry
-----Original Message-----
From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
[mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Pietro Riolo
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 9:15 AM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: [CNI-(C)] Re: [CNI-(C)] Software
Licensing Agreement
On 1/30/06, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen[_at_]rosenlaw.com> wrote:
This proves a danger of giving specific legal advice on a
public list.
You are very, very, very mistaken in portraying my post as a legal advice. None of my posts is ever intended to be legal advice.
Some of us believe that a public domain disclaimer has some
risks and
flaws under current copyright law, which does not make any
provision
for such disclaimers.
There are always some individuals who claim that disclaiming intellectual property rights is not possible. That's their opinion. Until there is clear law or court case that it is not possible to disclaim intellectual property rights, their opinion is completely groundless.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>
Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,712
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
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-- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:stevenjamar[_at_]gmail.com Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/ "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth." often attributed in various forms to Mark Twain, but I can't find it. I like it anyway.Received on Wed Feb 08 2006 - 00:20:00 GMT
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