The Public Domain Problem

1 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by todsacerdoti

1 Comments

philipwhiuk

8 hours ago

> ‘So what’, you say. ‘I’ve put the public domain notice on my work. I’m promising I’m not going to threaten or sue anyone for using my work. Shouldn’t that be enough?’

> Unfortunately, you are not the only person who will exercise control over your intellectual property. At some point, you will die, and the control will pass into the hands of your heirs and successors. (One of the absurdities of the 70 years p.m.a. copyright term is that every copyrightable work created by an adult will almost invariably be controlled by others after their death for longer than it was controlled by them personally while they were alive.)

My response to this is still Why should I care, I'll be dead.

I feel I should point out to the author, that you can put any license you like on it - after you're dead you have no control what the law does and doesn't care about and you won't be able to update the license accordingly.

Some people in copyright law seem to fail to grasp that you can't protect anything for definite once you're dead.