Public Domain and liability

[kmself at ix.netcom.com]

On Mon, Aug 07, 2000 at 01:01:07PM -0700, Blake Cretney wrote:
> 
> One reason people don't often release software to the public domain is
> fear of liability.  The concern is that even if you place a
> disclaimer on the software, someone could legally distribute your
> software without the disclaimer.  Then, if the software fails in some
> way, you could be sued as the manufacturer of defective software.
> 
> Now, to me, this sounds crazy.  However, I'm not a lawyer, and often
> legal decisions leave me amazed.  Has anyone ever been sued,
> especially successfully, for a non-malicious public domain program? 
> Does anyone have any comment on whether this is likely to happen? 

I believe we can move this into the realm of copyrighted but publicly
distributed works if we consider books which describe inherently
dangerous practices for which there might be liability attached.

Examples which come to mind:  anything dealing with explosives or
flammables, particularly "cookbooks" describing how to produce such
materials.  There's _The Anarchist's Cookbook_, written by William
Powell and published by L. Stuart, 1971.  A euthenasia book giving
methods for suicide or assisted death made the headlines a few years
back, _Final Exit_ by Humphry Derek, published by the Hemlock Society,
1991.  The University of California online catalog lists another sixty
or so titles.

There are several instances of parents seeking legal redress against
rock and roll bands or stars for songs or albums which were thought to
have contributed to actions of children.  Maralyn Manson comes to mind
though a quick web search doesn't turn up any plausible mentions of him
in law suits.

I'd say there's a body of case law and examples which should at least
provide grist for the mill here.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.                    http://www.opensales.org
  What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?   Debian GNU/Linux rocks!
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