An anti-copyright notice is a specific statement that is added to a work in order to encourage wide distribution. Such notices are legally required because, under the Berne Convention in international copyright law, works are protected even if no copyright statement is attached to them. However, "anti-copyright" statements typically do not take the form of either sophisticated open content licenses or a simple dedication to the public domain; instead, they usually just encourage wide distribution. It is possible to denounce all claims to copyright in a work including moral rights in a written disclaimer.

An example of an anti-copyright notice is the following: "Anti-Copyright! Reprint freely, in any manner desired, even without naming the source." Where such notices are attached depends highly on the type of work. They are often found in socialist anarchist magazines and books.

A copyright waiver might state the following:

The author of this work hereby waives all claim of copyright (economic and moral) in this work and immediately places it in the public domain; it may be used, distorted or destroyed in any manner whatsoever without further attribution or notice to the creator.

Most people would regard "anti-copyright" notices as being equivalent to a dedication of material into the public domain (as in the second example above). Some of these disclaimers, however, are less accurate and need to be interpreted individually as the term anti-copyright has no accepted legal meaning. For example, if just free distribution is encouraged, modification or lack of attribution is still illegal, making the material ineligible for collaborative writing projects like Wikipedia. In such a case anti-copyright is not a true denial of copyright, but just a modification of the protection it affords copyright holders.

See also

• copyleft vs. copyright
• Anti-copyright