Re: A Little Linguistic Playground

On 3/12/1999, Joseph Riolo <riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> wrote:
>
> I am playing/toying with a new word.
>
> If one desires to put his/her work in the public domain, he has to write
> a statement to effectuate it such as "I put this essay in the public
> domain". This is fine for most people but the term "public domain" is
> not intuitive because it does not resemble the term "copyright" in any
> way. Therefore, I propose a new word called "decopyright". It means to
> deprive a work of the copyright.
>
> I do not have immediate access to the unabridged Webster's Dictionary
> and Oxford English Dictionary. Those who do may want to do us a favor
> by looking them up for the word "decopyright".
>
> Several examples of the usage on the word:
>
> I decopyright this essay.
>
> (A librarian speaking to a patron.) Several decopyrighted books
> have arrived yesterday and you may want to borrow them today.
>
> (On the copyright page inside a book)
> Copyright 1999 by John Smith
> Decopyright 2005 by John Smith
>
> Unless it is decopyrighted, you have to ask the author for
> permission.
>
> My friend sometimes is a decopyrighter.
>
> Anything that is copyrightable is also decopyrightable.
>
> I did a brief search at http://www.dejanews.com/ and found that there
> was a post using the word "decopyright". http://www.nlsearch.com/ and
> http://www.altavista.digital.com/ also yielded several results but all
> of them are in French and German languages. I do not know what
> "decopyright" would mean in these languages.
>
> Well, what do you think?

     From an linguistic aesthetic perspective, I have to say that "decopyright" is an ugly word. From a public perception perspective, I don't see anything unclear about the words "public domain." There is an intuitive meaning to the phrase that most people, I suspect, understand. At the very least, the analogy to "public property" ought to be sufficient.

Daniel Schaeffer
<daniel_schaeffer[_at_]kirkland.com> Received on Fri Mar 12 1999 - 14:02:42 GMT