[LINK] Ars: 'Musopen raises $40, 000 to set classical music "free"'

[Roger Clarke]

Kim, I'll grant you that my comments don't apply to a country that 
still requires registration.  I don't think that includes any of the 
major countries, but if it's still 20, it's quite a few.

But as I read the Wikipedia entry, it supports the point I'm making:

>https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anti-copyright_notice
>>  ... under the Berne
>>  Convention in international copyright law, works are protected even
>>  if no copyright statement is attached to them. ...
>>  It is possible to **denounce** all claims to copyright in
>>  a work including moral rights in a written disclaimer.

It's possible that the word intended was 'renounce' (= repudiate), in 
which case I agree that the Wikipedia entry would be saying the 
opposite of what I said.

But the word 'denounce' is used, and is reasonable in that context. 
It means something quite different (= criticise / accuse / condemn). 
It doesn't mean that the courts will recognise the rights as having 
been voluntarily expired and the work being 'in the public domain'.

Last time I enquired about this, it appeared that there was no way to 
reliably place anything 'in the public domain' in Australia, and I 
understood that the problem afflicted many other jurisdictions as 
well.

My memory was that Richard Stallman argued that copyleft has to 
utilise copyright law against itself, in part because there was no 
effective way in which copyright in code could be firmly and 
unequivocally placed in the public domain.

There are several copyright law and policy people around.  Perhaps 
someone can elucidate for us - and perhaps come up with some 
authorities even better than Wikipedia  (:-)}


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University