All rights reversed is a phrase that indicates a release of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

or a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

licensing status. It is a pun on the common copyright disclaimer "

All rights reserved "All rights reserved" is a copyright formality indicating that the copyright holder ''reserves'', or holds for its own use, all the rights provided by copyright law. Originating in the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, it is unclear if it has any ...

", a

copyright formality Copyright formalities are legal (generally statutory law, statutory) requirements needed to obtain a copyright in a particular jurisdiction. Common copyright formalities include copyright registration, copyright renewal, copyright notice, and co ...

originally required by the

Buenos Aires Convention The Buenos Aires Convention (Third Pan-American Convention) is an international copyright treaty signed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 11 August 1910, providing mutual recognition of copyrights where the work carries a notice containing a sta ...

of 1910. "All Rights Reversed" (sometimes spelled ''rites'') was used by author Gregory Hill to authorize the free reprinting of his ''

Principia Discordia The ''Principia Discordia'' is the first published Discordian religious text. It was written by Greg Hill ( Malaclypse the Younger) with Kerry Wendell Thornley (Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst) and others. The first edition was printed allegedly usi ...

'' in the late 1960s. Hill's disclaimer was accompanied by the

kosher (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, yi, כּשר), fro ...

"Ⓚ" (for

kallisti An apple of discord is the core, kernel, or crux of an argument, or a small matter that could lead to a bigger dispute. It is a reference to the Golden Apple of Discord ( grc, ) in the story of the ''Judgement of Paris'' which, according to G ...

) symbol, a play on ©, the

copyright symbol The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings. 17 U.S.C. The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Co ...

. In 1984–5 programmer

Don Hopkins Don Hopkins is an artist and programmer specializing in human computer interaction and computer graphics. He is an alumnus of the University of Maryland, College Park, University of Maryland and a former member of the University of Maryland Huma ...

sent

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

a letter labeled "Copyleft—all rights reversed". Stallman chose the phrase to identify his

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

method of distribution. It is often accompanied by a reversed version of the copyright symbol (''see illustration''). That said, this usage is considered legally risky by the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

. "All Rights Reversed", its homophone, "All ''Rites'' Reversed", and/or the "Copyleft" symbol, are occasionally used among those who publish or produce media (or any other material that might normally be copyrighted) as a clever means of saying "This is not copyrighted. Please, do with it what you will." and encouraging the duplication and use of the "copy-lefted" material thereof.

References

{{Discordianism Copyleft Discordianism English phrases