[svlug] Fedora or Ubuntu for novis

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Thomas G. Digby (bubbles at well.com):

> If one truly wants a piece of code (or music or prose or whatever) one has
> written to not be owned by anybody, how about distributing it anonymously?

That would result in a work that's known to have _someone's_ copyright
encumbrance on it, but you have no idea whom to contact for permission
to redistribute it or to create derivative works.  So, anyone who does
so has to fear being sued by some stranger for copyright infringement.

You'd (as the party sued) be able to quite reasonably say to the judge
that you didn't know whom to contact, so you might avoid some of the
damages assessments, but you'd still be an infringer.  In the worst-case
scenario, the guy who sued you out of nowhere would pull out his/her
Library of Congress / Copyright Office registration documents, wave
those at the judge, and say this proves that he/she was the author, had
put the public on notice, and is entitled to statutory damages _plus_ an
injunction against further infringement.

This situation probably isn't what you have in mind.

Looking from the viewpoint of a reuser (downloader) of other people's
works, the sort of no-authorship-notice work you describe should be
carefully avoided, for that very reason.