> and supposedly, not all countries even recognize Public Domain
I'm not sure the phrasing is correct, at least for the most common example of this issue (european copyright tradition of moral rights): many european countries split the anglo-saxon copyright into estate rights (which are economic) and moral rights which are generally perpetual, inalienable, and imprescriptible.
As a result, while an author can assign (or waive) their estate rights they can not assign or waive their moral rights.
Unless there are additional special cases in the country's lawbooks an author in a moral-rights country can not put his works in the public domain (since it would require waiving rights he can't waive). Either the works can not be copyrighted (and are intrinsically in the public domain) or they will fall into the public domain when the author's rights expire.
It's common sense - in most european countries you can allow others to earn money from your work, modify it and distribute etc, but you can't allow others to lie that they made something, not you, when the truth is that you made it.
So it's not public domain, because some rights are forever yours, but you can very well allow anybody to use modify and distribute your creation.
I'm not sure the phrasing is correct, at least for the most common example of this issue (european copyright tradition of moral rights): many european countries split the anglo-saxon copyright into estate rights (which are economic) and moral rights which are generally perpetual, inalienable, and imprescriptible.
As a result, while an author can assign (or waive) their estate rights they can not assign or waive their moral rights.
Unless there are additional special cases in the country's lawbooks an author in a moral-rights country can not put his works in the public domain (since it would require waiving rights he can't waive). Either the works can not be copyrighted (and are intrinsically in the public domain) or they will fall into the public domain when the author's rights expire.