Slashdot Log In
Creative Commons Releases "Zero" License
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Feb 26, 2009 07:14 PM
from the ain't-nothin'-to-it-baby dept.
from the ain't-nothin'-to-it-baby dept.
revealingheart writes "Plagiarism Today reports on the release of the Creative Commons Zero license, which allows you to waive copyright and related rights to your works, improving on the existing public domain dedication. This follows-on from their original announcement on CC0. The CC0 waiver system is a major step forward for the Creative Commons Organization in terms of their public domain efforts. Even though it isn't a true public domain dedication, it only waives the rights as far as they can be waived (Note: Moral rights, in many countries, can not be outright waived), it opens up what is likely as close to a public domain option as practical under the current legal climate."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Heh (Score:4, Funny)
How amusing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
There is actually a logical backing for that. Think of the music industry, for example: they'll take anything they possibly can from their artists, if they can get away with it. Making certain rights legally impossible to waive puts a brick wall in the way of some of the more potentially abusive contracts that they would otherwise try to write up.
Parent
Re:How amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It's like certain rights under labor law: making them inviolable, impossible even willingly to give away, precludes certain abuses. Just as I can't give up my basic human rights in a contract (e.g., selling myself into indentured servitude), I shouldn't be able to give up certain rights over work I produce. For example, in France "moral rights" include the right of an artist to claim to have produced a certain work of art (which is distinct from ownership of the physical work or of rights to copy it). The artist retains the right to "disown" a work or to claim authorship of it. That could matter, for example, in the attribution of a literary prize, which depends on the authorship of a work but not on its copyright status. And it makes perfect sense that one not be allowed to sign away that basic right.
Parent
Re:How amusing (Score:4, Informative)
There's perfect logic behind it, and nothing sad about it whatsoever.
If I wrote a text, then I'm the author of that text. I can't really "waive" that. No statement from my side can change the FACT that I'm the author.
Oh, I can allow anyone to do anything they want with the text whatsoever. I can permit them to do this without mentioning my name at all, and with zero restrictions.
But I'm still the author. So if they published the text, and for example put *THEIR* name as author, this would be a fraud. If they really did not write the text, claiming that they did, is a lie. (completely regardless of copyright-status of the text, it would be a lie even in a world where copyright does not exist)
The law is like that in Norway: I can give you any and all rights to my works, no problem whatsoever. The only thing I cannot sign-away, is the right to be considered the author of the work.
Reasonable enough to me, and I don't see what's "sad" about it at all.
Parent
Local law can still be a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the concept of "public domain" is nonexistent in some legal systems. Polish law, for example, is extremely idiotic in this aspect - not only it's not possible in Poland to publish a work anonymously to give it a public domain status (because the law states that for anonymous works, the role of a "temporary" author is to be claimed by default by the "collective copyright management institutions", read "RIAA-alikes", at least until the author decides to announce himself - and their primary objective is of course making money in every way imaginable), it's not even possible for the author to waive his rights to monetary compensation for his works and control over their current and future use - that is, given the wording of the Polish law, it could be argued that, for example, a programmer could revoke a GPL license on an already published piece of code, retroactively. This, sadly, means, that in Poland the "Zero" license means almost nothing - and it could easily be used by a dishonest author to sue someone using his work as if the author really waived his rights to it, and in good faith because of how the license could be perceived.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This Post (Score:5, Funny)
This post is not covered under any license.
You are free to copy it, edit it, distribute it, delete it, mod it up, mod it down, etc.
Re:This Post (Score:5, Insightful)
This post is not covered under any license.
The problem is, under copyright law (US at least), your post is automatically copyrighted by you, and I'm not allowed to redistribute it without your permission. Giving that permission (usually with qualifications) is what a license does. So without a license, what you say below is false:
You are free to copy it, edit it, distribute it, delete it, mod it up, mod it down, etc.
Is this is true, then you have licensed me (and the rest of Slashdot) to do all these things, and what you said above (that it is not covered under any license) is false.
Parent
Obligatory cartoon (sort of) (Score:4, Interesting)
See thepiratebay.org for sort of an on-topic cartoon, if only at the opposite of the CC0.
i respectfully submit (Score:5, Insightful)
that change, in any society, on any issue, occurs in one of two ways:
1. gradual, progressive, incremental change
2. stagnation, followed by massive revolution
#1 occurs when the system is such that it can absord gradual challenges to the status quo
#2 occurs when some sort of challenge, say, a technological one, such as the internet, represents such a dramatic fundamental modification to the order of a system, say, intellectual property law, that there is no way for the system to digest and incorporate
so this cc0 license, while laudable, seems to me like putting a bandaid on the stump of a severed hand: fruitless
no, he only thing that is going to happen here is revolution: individuals, not because they are amorla pirates, but just because they want to consume their culture (and it is their culture) within suitable parameters of inconvenience, will just reject the entire intellectual property legal system
currently, this is a very hot topic on slashdot, has been for years, but we are the canaries in the coal mine. none of this has really trickled down as a conceptual challenge to the average joe on the street. and when it does, and it is going to, the average joe on the street will, en masse, completely ignore current intellectual property law. he is doing so now, in dribs and drabs, subconsciously and not explicitly. but the tension will increase, and then boom: a veritable new legal landscape. change bubbling up form the bottom, rather than imposed from above
Re:i respectfully submit (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
no. flat out wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
you are saying the desire to be free is only dependent upon dogmatic control as a contrasting agent
i assert to you that the desire to be free is an organic desire in its own right, with no preconditions
freedom is not a product of slavery. freedom is an original impulse
i really don't know how else to articulate how completely and utterly wrong you are. your idea of cause and effect is completely bogus
Re:i am presented an environment (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you think I make that assertion? I do not. I agree with your assertion. There is always a latent desire to be free of a bad, whether the bad exists or not. I desire to be free of zombie attacks, right now, regardless of the existence of zombie attacks.
Let's go back a bit. I suspect where we might disagree is how one effectively rejects the strict regimen. I say the most effective way to do so is to unambiguously free your creative output, such that even one who does not reject the regimen understands that they are free to to use your creativity. Do you disagree with this? If so, what do you think the most effective way to reject the regimen is?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no beef with teachers and learners who do what they have to do.
Anyone who can be meta enough to post on slashdot, I submit, should be thinking further ahead -- ensuring that in a decade there are enough OER that anyone in the world has freedom, regardless of what the copyright regime is (or is not). You and others at WikiEducator and similar sites are doing just that, so many cheers for your activity!
Fighting for fair use and other exceptions is absolutely part of a long term strategy. Critically imp
Official CC0 launch coming early March (Score:5, Informative)
We soft launched CC0 recently, and will be doing a hard launch in a couple weeks. If you want to know more, I urge you to check out http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 [creativecommons.org]
Here's a copy of the page for easy reading. Please mod this up. :-)
About CC0 -- "No RightsReserved"
This tool is at 1.0 and is ready for adoption. If you would like to participate in a formal announcement, please contact legal@creativecommons.org [mailto].
CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright.
In contrast to CC's licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether - the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators - the "no rights reserved" alternative to our licenses.
The Problem
Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright term expires. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by copyright owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about contributing a work to the public domain.
A Solution
CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law. CC0 is a universal instrument that is not ported to any particular legal jurisdiction, similar to many open source software licenses. And while this means that CC0 may not be completely effective at relinquishing all copyright interests in every jurisdiction, we believe it provides the best and most complete alternative for contributing a work to the public domain given the many complex and diverse copyright systems around the world.
Using CC0
Unlike the Public Domain Dedication and Certification, CC0 should not be used to mark works already in the public domain. However, it can be used to waive copyright or database rights to the extent you may have these rights in your work. In addition, you should only apply CC0 to a work if you own all relevant copyright or database rights in it, or have the necessary rights to apply CC0 to another person's work.
Public Domain (Score:4, Funny)
I've just been labeling my works "Copyright 1821 by The Joseph Wind Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved". Retroactive copyright extension has a while before it gets back that far.
Re:Bare licence or contractual licence? (Score:5, Informative)
IOW, if you release a piece of code under CC0 and I use it as a basis to write a program which I then am marketing, you cannot revoke your CC0 designation and stop me from selling my program.
Parent
goes further (Score:5, Informative)
The BSD license is basically, "you may use this for any purpose, as long as you retain this copyright notice". There's also an implicit, "and as long as no other law prevents you from doing so". That's roughly equivalent to most uses of the Creative Commons Attribution license [creativecommons.org] ("cc-by") (cc-by users can require that you "attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor", which could lead to more onerous requirements, but most don't).
This license removes even the attribution requirement, and attempts to waive all of those other implicit rights, such as moral rights in some countries. It's basically an attempt to come as close as possible to: you really can use this for anything you want, absolutely no strings attached, I really mean it.
For software licensing the difference is somewhat smaller, because non-copyright restrictions like moral rights are applied fairly infrequently to software--- they're more often applied to things like artistic works. I'm guessing that's why BSD-licensed software has never worried about it much.
You can indeed apply CC licenses to software, though I would probably only do so with the non-restrictive ones, like this one or cc-by. If you want to apply a copyleft license to software, using something like the GPL or LGPL is probably better than the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike ("cc-by-sa"), because it makes more effort to define exactly what the viral nature does and doesn't do, while cc-by-sa leaves a bunch of stuff vague when it comes to thinks like linking.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:goes further (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:So, then "Zero" is still... (Score:5, Funny)
Reading up on the Wikipedia < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_Condensate> article, the thing to be wary of is a bosenova - a spontaneous explosion in which a whole bunch of participants disappear. As a near zero copy-left condensate looks very similar to a communist state, it looks very much like an opportunity for someone to propose a Bose-Einstein-Lenin condensate, wherein all the workers are equal, until a megalomaniac arises. Or if the work is in programming, a robotic overlord.
Parent
Re:Fix the Underlying (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)