Comment by avhon1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avhon1 | Hacker News Reader

I've been frustrated that there exists no lawyer-verified, internationally-viable way to permanently waive all claims and rights to things (software or otherwise) I publish, and to assert that those rights will not be later reclaimed (whether by me, parties representing me, or heirs or successors who might claim to have inherited my rights).

CC0's biggest issues for me are that, one, it explicitly does not waive rights to patentable ideas contained in the work:

> No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.

...and two, that it only specifically says that I will not revoke the license or undertake "any other legal or equitable action to disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the Work by the public". I don't just want to enable "quiet enjoyment", I want to permit every legally permissible use of my work (anything I could grant a license for). "Vocal profiteering" is arguably not "quiet enjoyment", but I want to ensure that neither me, my representatives, nor my heirs or successors, could make that argument to revoke the license I grant.

The Blue Oak license nicely disburses patent rights:

> Each contributor licenses you to do everything with this software that would otherwise infringe any patent claims they can license or become able to license.

...but expressly retains copyright (preventing someone else from redistributing the work under different terms), and requires that the work always be distributed with a notice that the work is licensed https://blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0

I wish to completely unburden anyone who finds my work desirable from the burden of attribution. This is why Public Domain is the end goal, and why licenses that do not expressly attempt to un-copyright my work are insufficient. MIT0 merely grants permission "to deal in the Software [to say nothing about non-software work, or aspects of a work] without restriction", and 0BSD is even weaker, granting only "permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee" [nevermind any activities that aren't expressly listed in the license, but which might be restricted by a country's system of copy-, artists', or moral rights, or any other restrictions I may impose besides fees].

"Quiet enjoyment" is a archaic legal term of art, arising (I believe) in law governing conveyances of real property. The Black's law dictionary on my desk defines "quiet" in this context as "Unmolested; tranquil; free from interference or disturbance." That is, it's not a condition imposed on the transferee ("if you do not enjoy the conveyed property quietly, I can make trouble for you").

The term causes enough confusion to be retired, but lawyers do love their stock phrases.

> way to permanently waive all claims and rights to things (software or otherwise) I publish, and to assert that those rights will not be later reclaimed

Probably because to do the second, you can't do the first - you have to retain enough rights to keep someone else from copying and relicensing it. And if you do the first, you can't do the second.

The best way probably involves a third party, like a foundation or trustee, taking on the ownership under a contract that they will never switch ownership until it's naturally released by time. Of course, that costs money to maintain, otherwise it becomes an asset that gets sold off.

Relicensing from second parties to third parties is acceptable, because so long as my publication is discoverable (via catalog, search engine, etc...), the third party could obtain the public-domain permission for (the copyrighted parts which are in fact) my work.

Somewhat analogously, in the United States you can publish copyrighted works that contain, and even largely consist of, public-domain content. An example off the top of my head is this book [ CliffsComplete Shakespeare's Hamlet ]( https://www.amazon.com/CliffsComplete-Shakespeares-Hamlet-Wi... ) that I used in school. This was how I was introduced to, and first read, the play. The bulk of the text consists of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", which is in the public domain in the United States, and does not require attribution or licensing. The annotations, footnotes, and explanations are original and copyrighted by the publisher (Cliff's Notes). However, I can extract the original play within and redistribute it, or novel works based on it, without worrying about violating rights held by Cliff's Notes.

When anyone is allowed to redistribute under their own terms and attribution, what the user can or can't do depends entirely on where/who they got the work from. Which means in your case that if the place you published the work becomes inaccessible, for example the heirs or successors stop paying for hosting, people that got it from you using the hypothetical super permissive license might no longer be able to prove they are allowed to do what they want with the work.

That is "merely" a matter of record / archiving. I'd be happy to annotate my first-party copies with copies of the license, so there would exist copies of the work with the license / public-domain declaration attached. The authenticity could be attested by archived copies (perhaps held by Github, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, or web scrapers / archivers like the WayBack Machine, Google Archive, etc.), or by being signed with a cryptographic key of mine.

This same problem exists with the public domain. If, in the United States, you find an unpublished century-old manuscript in your attic, its copyright has expired, and you can't claim rights to it. However, because nobody else knows about it, you could in practice type it all in to a computer and claim to have authored the work.

edit: This record also does not have to be perfect. I will probably be dead in a century and unable to care about, or further influence, the usage of my work. Under current U.S. law, my works will already be in, or eventually entering into, the public domain. If you really want to be long-term, there's no guarantee that in the distant future anybody will have a copy of, or care about, my works. Alternatively, there is no guarantee that, in the long-term future, the present state of intellectual property law, or any actions I take within it, will have any bearing on the rights future beings will have to do or not do things with my works.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com