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This is always a valid concern, and I wish more people brought it up. It's why things like CC0, the Unlicense, and (my personal favorite) the WTPL exist. Trut

This is always a valid concern, and I wish more people brought it up. It's why things like CC0, the Unlicense, and (my personal favorite) the WTPL exist. Truth be told, though, I'm not 100% sure it's relevant here in term of US Gov't creations. Technically, these items were never copyrighted, so there aren't any rights to retain. But that's moot, since US law only extends to the US (tell that to the MPAA). Government creations ARE copyrighted works in many countries, which leads to the interesting notion that the US gov't may hold rights in foreign countries but not the US. IANAL.

germanier 12y ago
Technically (under German law) any creation is automatically copyrighted the moment it's created. Whether US law says it wasn't is not relevant for a German court. The chance of the creator suing is small but it's not zero. CC0 and the like carefully work around these laws (which exist in many countries beside Germany) by giving you a license to do anything with the work (while retaining copyright – but that's only a technical distinction). Of course one might argue that a US government worker implicitly gave up their rights in a similar way, but as far as I'm aware nobody looked into that yet.