All rights reversed

Not to be confused with All rights reserved.
This article is about the phrase. For the song by the Chemical Brothers, see We Are the Night.

The copyleft symbol. Unlike the copyright symbol, it has no legal meaning.

All rights reversed is a phrase that indicates a release of a publication under copyleft licensing status.[1] It is a pun on the common copyright disclaimer "All rights reserved", a copyright formality originally required by the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910. However Arnoud Engelfriet writes that "[t]he phrase ['All rights reversed'] by itself is not enough; a license must explicitly state the rights that are granted".[2]

"All Rights Reversed" (sometimes spelled rites) was used by author Gregory Hill in his Discordian text Principia Discordia.[3]

In 1984 or 1985, programmer Don Hopkins sent Richard Stallman a letter labeled "Copyleft—all rights reversed". Stallman chose the phrase to identify his free software method of distribution.[4] It is often accompanied by a reversed version of the copyright symbol.[5] That said, the use of the reversed copyright symbol is considered legally risky by the Free Software Foundation.[6]

  1. ^ Sandredv, J. (2002). Managing Open Source Projects: A Wiley Tech Brief. Wiley. ISBN 9780471189176. Free Software Foundation uses the term copyleft, which means all rights reversed.
  2. ^ Engelfriet, Arnoud (2006). "The phrase "All rights reserved"". Ius mentis. Archived from the original on January 1, 2008. Retrieved December 27, 2007.
  3. ^ Hill, Gregory (1965). Principia Discordia. Ⓚ All Rites Reversed - reprint what you like
  4. ^ Stallman, Richard (1999). Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. O'Reilly Media. pp. 59. ISBN 1-56592-582-3.
  5. ^ Muffatto, Moreno (2006). Open Source: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Imperial College Press. p. 40. ISBN 1-86094-665-8.
  6. ^ "What is Copyleft?". Free Software Foundation. Archived from the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved May 6, 2017. It is a legal mistake to use a backwards C in a circle instead of a copyright symbol. Copyleft is based legally on copyright, so the work should have a copyright notice. A copyright notice requires either the copyright symbol (a C in a circle) or the word "Copyright". A backwards C in a circle has no special legal significance, so it doesn't make a copyright notice. It may be amusing in book covers, posters, and such, but be careful how you represent it in a web page!