Eleanor McHugh DE I. P. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. >> It's correct only for USA (and probably few other countries). In most >> jurisdiction public domain works require attribution. EM> Interesting. So in those jurisdictions a widely distributed anonymous EM> work wouldn't count as public domain? US law defines public domain as (according to [1]) "the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived" Berne Convention [2] standing as base for international copyright law (signed by 162 countries [3]) had defined so called "Moral Rights" [2.1]. This rights are independent from author's rights to sell, modify and so on ("economical rights") which she can pass to other entities. Moral Rights are assigned automatically by the fact of creating an artistic work. By creating you receive right "to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification <...> the said work <...>" [2.1]. This rights are inalienable: you can't reject to be under protection. US has neglected concept of inalienable Moral Rights. So US public domain works are not necessary public domain, e. g., in Europe. Now to anonymous work. As mentioned above, moral right are assigned automatically regardless of author. Anonymous (and pseudonymous) works are protected by the same laws with one exception: if author's name can't be determined with confidence then this work is protected for 50 years since it's been lawfully made available to public. [2.2] If anonymous/pseudonymous author has claimed his identity he receive standard protection for his life and 50 years after (this period can be extended in his country). --- [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ [2] BERNE CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF LITERARY AND ARTISTIC WORKS: http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html [2.1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/6bis.html [2.2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/7.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_party_to_the_Berne_Convention -- I. P. 2007-03-11T22:05