Thank you all for the replies. I know WANAL, but your replies have made some sense. I hope they are the case. There seems to be too many questions, that a copyright/tradmark lawyer would be useful to answer. Anyone know one? ;) I take copyright quite seriously, as I've seen stupidity like I mentioned happen time and again. Perhaps my understanding needs to be upgraded, however, I feel comforted - a little. <blockquote>On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Oleg Koptev <<a href="mailto:koptev.oleg@gmail.com">koptev.oleg@gmail.com</a>> wrote: I'm not lawyer, but I think 'irreversible' means 'irreversible'. When you talk about 'company comes along, grab it, copyright it..' it's sounds like — 'I've been freed from jail, but Evil Judge comes along, grabs me and jailed me again for same crime'. It's nonsense. </blockquote>I took "irreversible" to mean the author can not change it to another license, once done. That paragraph and the following one: <blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, 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.</blockquote>taken together, they sound like someone else can copyright someones PD work. However IANAL and may have a misunderstanding of the paragraphs. The large difficulty with this kind of thing is that the law changes from place to place about how to treat copyrighted works. Some countries do not allow artwork to be released into the PD. Some areas do not recognise PD works, instead saying "all artwork is copyrighted." Even still, in other places, no one cares about copyrighted works, and can't be acted against since the copyright holders (or even UN) have no jurisdiction in that area. The world is still a large place, even though the Internet has enlarged our communication capacity.So, it comes again to...what is OCAL PD based on? US law? Is PD applicable to UN nations members? mmm. Again, I dont know enough to ask the right questions. Something about it just doesnt add up for me. I can't quite put my finger on it. <div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 7:52 PM, Greg Bulmash <<a href="mailto:oneminuteinspirations@gmail.com">oneminuteinspirations@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> To copyright a work, you must be the author, the legal agent of the author, or someone to whom the ownership of the piece has been legally granted. You can't stumble across a work and say "looks like no one owns this, so I'll plant a flag and claim it in the name of England." If you dedicate something to the Public Domain, no one else can legally claim ownership without making false statements to the copyright office. Yes, they can commercially exploit the image... like making t-shirts with it, using it in ads, etc. And the derivative work they create, if it contains substantial originality, can be copyrighted. But they cannot then go and claim a copyright on your image and stop people from using it in other ways. They can only go after people using their work or something substantially similar. With Trademark, because there is a record of the image being made part of a public domain repository before anyone began using it in trade, their attempt to restrict its use by others would be easily knocked down. It's like proving prior art in a patent challenge. Now, someone could falsely copyright your work or falsely trademark it, then start making threats, and you might have to pay lawyers to get a court to make their stupidity stop. But you could also have your neighbor sue you because they believe the color of your car is reducing their property value and you'd have to pay a lawyer to make that stupidity stop too. - Greg <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"></blockquote> </blockquote></div> -- Cheers Chovynz