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.

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]

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

"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]