Since you're on the theme of technicalities I have a slightly different technical question: How could his work ever be released, practically speaking? Can he r

Since you're on the theme of technicalities I have a slightly different technical question: How could his work ever be released, practically speaking? Can he release it? No, according to his contract (per the OP blog post) he can only publish it through DC. Can some other entity release it? They'd need a copy of it. But are there any copies that are actually 100% his work? If you alter a public domain work, I don't think that altered work is public domain. It's not like the GPL. I'd imagine the altered work belongs to the alter-er. Surely DC had some slight nuance, a watermark, a logo, etc on whatever copies they released. Could they file a suit against somebody who scans and re-releases an old release? Maybe a old friend has a manuscript somewhere...