Copyleft: Copyright meets the Bizarro World

If Leonardo were still alive he'd smile at this.

I first learned of copyleft's existence in Wired magazine's Geekipedia supplement to its October 2007 issue, both of which arrived about an hour ago in today's mail.

The Geekipedia's entry reads as follows.

Copyleft

The brainchild of software developer Richard Stallman, copyleft turns copyright on its head.

Rather than restricting distribution of creative works, this voluntary license guarantees their propogation through a clever viral trick: Anyone is free to copy or alter the work as long as the results are likewise unfettered. (The most common forms of copyleft — the GNU Public License and its permutations — cover Wikipedia entries and a variety of software programs.)

It sounds like public domain, but copylefted works remain under copyright.

Violating the requirement to copyleft any derivative works constitutes infringement punishable under federal law.

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I have no idea what that all means.

Read the Wikipedia entry on copyleft if you don't already have a headache.