Creative Commons Releases "Zero" License 209
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."
How amusing (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Local law can still be a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:goes further (Score:5, Interesting)
I disrespectfully do not submit (Score:2, Interesting)
You assume there's only one culture involved. In much of the non-Western world copyright is a culturally alien concept foisted on people as a means of economic colonialism. In many places it's worthwhile to encourage resistance to copyright instead of assuming that copyright is just there to stay and that observance of it can only grow.
Re:How amusing (Score:2, Interesting)
In the US, we traditionally haven't granted moral rights, and we barely do now (most authors don't get them, as it happens). Yet we manage to have incentivized plenty of authors anyway.
It seems to me that moral rights - ie, being recognised as the original author of a particular work - aren't about incentivizing authors. They may have that effect, but their main purpose is more like trademark law: if I see a book written by J.K. Rowling, I want to know that it's actually been written by her, and not by someone else who has been forced to give up their credit.
I'm actually rather worried that attribution is being lumped in with distribution under the banner of copyright. I'd like to see exclusive distribution rights limited to a term of 6-12 months, but I'm perfectly happy with attribution rights existing in perpetuity.
Am I the only one not liking Creative Commons? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't particularly care for the idea of the Creative Commons, where content creators get to pick and choose among several different variations of the terms under which they want to license their stuff.
I would really prefer a bifurcated Internet, the strong walls of which would serve to just as happily keep closed content out of my sight as it would to keep those who have walled themselves in with copyright, DRM etc. to keep people like me out.
Since we each respectively view the other party as riff-raff, then let's each keep the other riff-raff out.
When THEY log onto the Internet, they don't want people like me taking their content. Fine, then let's make the part of the Internet in which they play somewhere else.
For *my* side of the Internet, I don't want to have to go sifting through different variations on licenses. I want a free-for-all, where I never even have to think about licenses.
My ideal Internet would have two parts, theirs, and mine. I don't care what their side looks like. For all I care it can have rock solid impossible-to-break DRM. It doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is that their DRM infected Internet not be allowed to pollute my side of the Internet in any manner.
So, what's the value of multiple Creative Commons licenses? I want to only see, ever, just one license, the free-for-all license. The ideal Internet is everybody playing by the rules ... the rules being that anyone can copy, mash-up, mix and match whatever at any time ... and nobody is ever allowed in that would ever try to impose a more restrictive rule.
Maybe technically the way to do this is through a portal, a CC site or a search engine which only returns free-for-all content. But the non-free content needs to be kept out of the results so it doesn't get in the way.