I've volunteered with Librivox (whose volunteers read and record books in the public domain and release the resulting audio files back into the publich domain) since its inception a few years ago, so the public domain is near to my heart.
Creative Commons has has been thinking about ways to "help cultivate a vibrant and rich pool of freely available resources accessible to anyone to use for any purpose, unconditionally". One result of this is CCO (a second as-of-yet unidentified tool will be released soon):
"CC0 (read “CC Zero”) is a universal waiver that may be used by anyone wishing to permanently surrender the copyright and database rights they may have in a work, thereby placing it as nearly as possible into the public domain. CC0 is not a license, but a legal tool that improves on the “dedication” function of our existing, U.S.-centric public domain dedication and certification"
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