Back in 2005. Senor Barborito wrote:

Seriously, don't you ever learn? wrote:

He said basically you have posted to the public domain on someone else's message board. You can certainly assert anything you like, and they can claim to grant you anything they like in regards to copyright. But unless money is involved or someone is reproducing your work stating that they created it, there's nothing much to see here. Specificly, he said almost all fair use rules can be defensibly applied here. Criticism, comment, reporting all apply and the burden suddenly is laid on you to explain to a judge why your freely available publicly accessible work that exists on someone else's website can't be quoted, even in it's entirety, as long as they are stating you wrote it when no financial damage occurs to you. There's the letter of the law, and then there's the amount of work people are willing to pay/do to nitpick it to death.

First off, I do not for a minute believe that posting to the Internet has ever been considered publishing to the public domain, ever. This topic is interesting enough to me that I'll bother to read up on some cases this evening - MPAA vs. 2600 should have some bearing hee, amongst others.

Assuming for a second your 'lawyer friend' is correct, my immediate followup question is what happens if I copy my Metafilter post into a JPG, slap it on a CafePress T-shirt, sell one to my Aunt Ethel, and THEN mail you a DMCA takedown formletter?