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Under a NoDeriv license so it cannot be built upon. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

You're right. Thats a bad choice of license in my opinion, but at least its out there to look at. Completely undocumented though. Readme is empty!

Look at this source file (chosen at random): master/ivote-server/common/election.py. Number of comments other than license: 0.

Looks like its all in python, served as a CGI through apache. Not what I would use, but nothing particularly wrong with that.

Readme is empty, so I can't even figure out what algorithm they are using.

My open source election software is BSD licensed, and has a readme that says what it does, and some comments in the code. Its also more self documenting (type safe language!). Sure, mine is no where near usable, but at least its licensed such that it can be used. I just started it recently, and its just a hobby project of mine, so don't expect too much. I'm not looking for help or review of my system yet, but I'll get there eventually!

My approach is based on RSA blind signing and should be secure (either correct or provably fraudulent while protecting voter anonymity) in the face of a hostile authority running all the servers, assuming you can agree on a list of registered voters and collect public keys from them (and yes, I know thats very non trivial).

Anyway, given their license and lack of documentation, I'll just keep working on mine. I don't even know where I'd start a review of their system. Can anyone actually figure out what their system does from a algorithm /cryptography standpoint?

Under a NoDeriv license so it cannot be built upon. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The report says that instead of simply throwing people in jail those suspected of stealing could be fined if they did not reply to warnings, with a relatively low fine (€60) to begin, and the size of the fine would increase depending on the number of infractions. (change mine)

Ah brave new world. And some people are asking me why I have such strong opinion on copyright. Because to serve a few special interests we throw every common sense out the window, we criminalize whole demographics for a crime that have no impact on anything. We reward monopolies, stifle our culture and create legal frameworks that would be just brain-dead for any real property.

The new government agency is headed by a board of nine members, three appointed by the government, two by the legislative bodies, three by judicial bodies and one by the Conseil supérieur de la propriété littéraire et artistique (Superior Council of Artistic and Literary Property), a government council responsible to the French Ministry of Culture.[15] The agency is vested with the power to police Internet users.

So you have some people, 6 from the current legislative, 3 from the judicial to "police Internet users". You know, normally the power to "police" is given to the executive, the judicial are the courts and assume innocent before proven guilty and the legislative forging out the laws. This is usually called "Separation of powers".

To ensure that internet subscribers "screen their internet connections in order to prevent the exchange of copyrighted material without prior agreement from the copyright holders"

Ah ok. So I am suppose to know in advance that the web site have the copyrights to present me the content? How am I suppose to do that? How am I suppose to know if the work is already in public domains, is licensed under a free license like the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/who-uses-cc which about over 100,000,000 works are using the CC license or the site have some contract with the publisher?

(1) An email message is sent to the offending internet access subscriber, derived from the IP address involved in the claim. The email specifies the time of the claim but neither the object of the claim nor the identity of the claimant.

What email address are they using? My gmail address? My company address? My hotmail or yahoo address? There is no law that requires me to register an email address with the government.

I could go on. You can read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law
This bill stinks. It is a shame for a democratic country. It is a shame for Europe.

Please don't license software under the Creative Commons licenses. They're not GPL compatible, and Creative Commons themselves don't recommend it. (CC0, their public domain dedication, is still OK.)

First, let me say that I agree with you completely. You're not the first person to come up with the idea, I recall that being hashed out a while back and found this site that references it:
http://www.sitepoint.com/open-source-licensing/

*** Update from the bottom of this post ***
It is probably worth reading all of this and clicking the many links. After spending over an hour and a half on this silly quest I have managed to find some suitable tools that will help you (and others) as well as a variety of resources which we could use to easily create our own such tools. It's a good idea and an idea that is long overdue. There are some, it turns out, that have already attempted it but I am thinking a more robust solution would be an excellent addition to the community. I've done "my part" at this point but I'm probably willing to get my hands a little dirtier if need be but I suspect there are people here who have skills I don't and who have skills that aren't as rusty as my own.

Either way, be sure to read this as there are some decent links and there are some actual scripts that people have coded that do accomplish this task. The links are in the list and I've made an effort to describe them to some extent or at least indicate their importance so that you can narrow down which ones you wish to review and which ones you can just safely ignore. I don't think you (and I) are the only folks who are interested in it so the time invested is likely not wasted. Thanks for the thought process which engaged my brain hamsters. I enjoyed the chase.
*** End Update ***

Anyhow... That would be an excellent addition to the web. I've never seen anything of the sort actually done about it though it's been pondered in the past so I meandered off to Google and pulled a couple of links out of my favorites to see what I could come up with. But, be aware, I don't have exactly what you're looking for (or know if it exists as of yet) but I'll add to this post as I search and if I can't find what it is that you're looking for (it seems unlikely and I'm not sure why - it's pretty obviously something that would benefit the community and it doesn't look all that difficult) I can at least provide you with the resources to create the tool you're looking for. Hopefully that helps...

You can kind of do it on your own, manually, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses

Larry Rose's book 'Open Source Licensing' is available free online, specifically chapter 10 applies:
http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm

This is not even remotely what you asked for but still interesting and on-topic (and I want to share it):
http://www.tldrlegal.com/compare

You could get SOME of that data here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

This one isn't complete but is simple and easy (and, like the last one, new to me):
http://jan-krueger.net/doc/opensource-licenses.html

In my search I found this, which isn't what you wanted but is a start:
http://creativecommons.org/choose/ (It looks to be pretty basic, and it is, but it is a good start.)

Another one that is new to me but pretty quick and easy to use. Still not what you wanted though:
http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/opensource/

This one looks a lot like the one from Wikipedia, I've not checked to see if it is a duplicate or not:
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_o

Most creative commons requires attribution. If you really "don't care", you should explicitly state that your software is CC0

I guess Cory Doctorow made the mistake of using a Creative Commons license.

Next time, he should just release his books under GPL3.

Create something worth copyrighting.

And get sued for accidentally having re-created something that someone else has copyrighted. Independent creation is difficult to prove, and such a legal defense may be cost-prohibitive anyway. What steps do you recommend taking to prevent another Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music?

Then bitch about it being too long under your legal protection.

On the one hand, you may have just described an impossibility because copyrights already last for decades after the author is dead. By definition, an author won't live long enough to complain. On the other hand, a time-delayed public domain dedication exists.

The point that the author is making is that there should be some sort of option to allow you to specify this - "do whatever the hell you want, stop asking me if you can use it, I don't care."

He's making the point because, as he notes, a significant portion of the code on GitHub doesn't specify a license, which means it defaults to "all rights reserved," even though that's clearly not the intent of at least some portion of the "no-license" authors there.

The author should instead be encouraging GitHub to make the default license be: http://creativecommons.org/about/pdm

The author cannot wish away the current IP law which is, as you state... "all rights reserved" by default. The reservation of rights is automatic on creation of any artistic work including code. Despite how the original author feels now, all users of code with undeclared copyrights are subjecting themselves to legal ramifications later if the orignal author ever changes their mind about licensing rights.

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Patent_issues

This is because our legal system makes this assumption. Wishful thinking does not make laws go away. If you release software with no license, then it is legally presumed to have full copyright protection. You need to explicitly give up your rights.

Actually, in the USA it may not even be possible to do that. The way our copyright laws are written, everything appliciable is automatically copyrighted. You can sign your rights away to another holder, but there's no provision for abolishing them whatsoever. The closest you can (safely) come is to use the CC0 licence (full license text here).

This is because our legal system makes this assumption. Wishful thinking does not make laws go away. If you release software with no license, then it is legally presumed to have full copyright protection. You need to explicitly give up your rights.

Actually, in the USA it may not even be possible to do that. The way our copyright laws are written, everything appliciable is automatically copyrighted. You can sign your rights away to another holder, but there's no provision for abolishing them whatsoever. The closest you can (safely) come is to use the CC0 licence (full license text here).

The Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license is currently the closest thing you're going to find to an official, globally effective, public domain grant.

It's worth pointing out that this was released under Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial" license, which means anyone can adapt (remix, sing over, etc.) and distribute it, but must give due credit to the original author and must not use it for any commercial purpose.

The question is whether Glee crossed the line from "sounds similar to" to "used the same background recordings as". Coulton has a karaoke version available, and at one point it was possible to purchase a usb drive containing source tracks of this song (among others) as part of a creative commons fundraiser, so it's certainly feasible that the Glee version simply stuck new vocals on top of JoCo's existing tracks. There is some strong evidence that that is exactly what happened.

DRM is a no no with CC-by-SA, it says it like this: "You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict [the access to the work]" ( the CC-by-SA legal code part 4a)

But the license that OSM has adopted, the ODbL will allow you to do what you want with the created map, as long as you give attribution on it (and share the mapdata).

If you weren't ignoring it, you were misunderstanding it, so let me explain it again in clearer terms. You see, I write a fair bit of code just because I feel like writing it; I want this code to be freely available, so I make it so. I also write a fair bit of code for pay, which ends up licensed under whatever terms the party paying me for that code wishes for it to be licensed under (with the exception of my employer, I do restrict this to open licenses because I believe in sharing code whenever possible).

To facilitate this, I have a copyright notice along the lines of "All content licensed under Creative Commons unless otherwise noted." on every page of my site. This saves me the trouble of adding a license to each of my works; I only have to specify licenses for the few that are not CC. Were I to release my works into the public domain, I would have to explicitly state the licensing terms for each of my works individually; even those which are currently covered by the footer copyright notice, which is currently the majority of my work. There is no "All content is released into the public domain unless otherwise noted", as releasing a work into the public domain is an action that has to be stated explicitly for a single work.

The default state of any work created by any person is copyright. If public domain were the default, my CC works would be public domain works instead; since releasing those works into the public domain would require a nontrivial amount of effort for each of those works, I went with the next best thing: defaulting to the least restrictive license I could reasonably find.

Maybe some day I'll find the free time to go through each of my works and explicitly release them into the public domain, but right now I'd rather write and share code, since that's what I'm actually trying to do. The way it is now, I just have to attach an explicit license to the very few I write on contract, with the footer copyright notice automatically applying to everything else. But you're right, copyright does have a value for me, relating to those works; a negative value.

I release a fair bit of work under CC3.0-Attribution. You tell me.

Interesting links. Thanks.

My pleasure. If you do read the Usedsoft decision, there's a good chance you'll find it pretty impenetrable, unless you are familiar with the computer programs directive — I prepared some slides for a friend's talk on Usedsoft a couple of weeks back, which you might find helpful alongside the decision. (Listed as (c) to me (ironic, given the thread here) but, as far as I'm concerned, treat as CC0.)

Except that while there are a lot of publishers abusing copyright to keep things locked down forever, O'Reilly, which publishes computer books, is publishing books that are less than 28 years old and hence would be under copyright even under the original 28 year copyright law that this country started with. No one buys 29 year old computer books.

In fact, O'Reilly public domains their books after 28 years.

There are plenty of complaints about copyright law. Please do not aim them at O'Reilly.

What happens if you release your content for non-profit use only (i.e. non-commercial) and Google indexes it/ or takes a screenshot of the full text?
You don't want to set up a paywall because you just want to offer your content for "free" to human readers as long as the reader does not profit from that content directly. I would argue that no human in Google is reading ALL the content that Google harvests, because of this I also believe also that Google's sole intention is to profit from the content that they harvest. Combined with the fact that Google harvests websites as a "opt-out" service, it is just screaming for a law-case as fair usage gets very murky when you are making money with it.

GPL is about the rights of the user, not of the developer.

No, the GPL is about the rights of somebody trying to distribute software. It is a distribution license, not an EULA. What an individual user can actually do with GPL'd software is not even covered at all, including reverse engineering, modifications, or how it is used if even as placemats for dinner.

The only thing the GPL covers is what happens if you want to give a copy of the software covered under the GPL to somebody else. Normally most companies simply say you can't redistribute the software and that is the end of it. The GPL instead spells out specific conditions that must be met if you engage in that practice.

Then again, you can opt instead for something like the CC0 license. If that had been done, this whole mess wouldn't even be remotely a problem. I've offered some of my software under this license when I thought it was appropriate.

As a 'semi-pro' photographer (Ive been paid for work but its a hobby to me these days) I totally agree. Someone taking a photo involves a lot of things that can make it unique and deserving of copyright.

However... I personally don't believe that a photographic reproduction designed explicitly for the purpose of optimum and faithful reproduction of the existing work deserves the full protections of copyright.
The principle I hold is simple, if your copying it like a photocopier would, trying to make an exact flat replica of the public domain original as if you laid it down on the glass of a hypothetical photocopier that it could fit on, it shouldn't matter how complicated your photocopier is. If your not changing the original it should stay public domain regardless of format. Retyping the works of Shakespeare shouldnt let you copyright them based on the fact you chose a different font, page width, line spacing, etc.

This kind of thing is an unfortunate grey area, while I believe the photographer deserves full credit and has a right to get paid. I don't feel that existing law properly handles 'reproduction copying' in a suitable fashion.

Personally I would licence any kind of photo-reproduction work I did with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs by default and offer alternative licensing like Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs on request for a small cost depending on what they were doing with it, Creative Commons Attribution for a bit more, or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike on request when it seemed appropriate.
Its my reproduction shot so I want to be acknowledged as the photographer and I don't want the reproduction modified as it is meant to be a reproduction shot, not source material for further works, however I'm not a jerk and I would happily give people needed permission if they asked and if they were trying to make money, then I would expect a payment in proportion to how important my stuff was to their work. If its litterally a block mount photo print of my photo... I'm expecting a percentage cut or big pay... if its used as a texture in a student developed game set in a museum or something like that... Id probably only want attribution.

As a 'semi-pro' photographer (Ive been paid for work but its a hobby to me these days) I totally agree. Someone taking a photo involves a lot of things that can make it unique and deserving of copyright.

However... I personally don't believe that a photographic reproduction designed explicitly for the purpose of optimum and faithful reproduction of the existing work deserves the full protections of copyright.
The principle I hold is simple, if your copying it like a photocopier would, trying to make an exact flat replica of the public domain original as if you laid it down on the glass of a hypothetical photocopier that it could fit on, it shouldn't matter how complicated your photocopier is. If your not changing the original it should stay public domain regardless of format. Retyping the works of Shakespeare shouldnt let you copyright them based on the fact you chose a different font, page width, line spacing, etc.

This kind of thing is an unfortunate grey area, while I believe the photographer deserves full credit and has a right to get paid. I don't feel that existing law properly handles 'reproduction copying' in a suitable fashion.

Personally I would licence any kind of photo-reproduction work I did with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs by default and offer alternative licensing like Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs on request for a small cost depending on what they were doing with it, Creative Commons Attribution for a bit more, or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike on request when it seemed appropriate.
Its my reproduction shot so I want to be acknowledged as the photographer and I don't want the reproduction modified as it is meant to be a reproduction shot, not source material for further works, however I'm not a jerk and I would happily give people needed permission if they asked and if they were trying to make money, then I would expect a payment in proportion to how important my stuff was to their work. If its litterally a block mount photo print of my photo... I'm expecting a percentage cut or big pay... if its used as a texture in a student developed game set in a museum or something like that... Id probably only want attribution.

As a 'semi-pro' photographer (Ive been paid for work but its a hobby to me these days) I totally agree. Someone taking a photo involves a lot of things that can make it unique and deserving of copyright.

However... I personally don't believe that a photographic reproduction designed explicitly for the purpose of optimum and faithful reproduction of the existing work deserves the full protections of copyright.
The principle I hold is simple, if your copying it like a photocopier would, trying to make an exact flat replica of the public domain original as if you laid it down on the glass of a hypothetical photocopier that it could fit on, it shouldn't matter how complicated your photocopier is. If your not changing the original it should stay public domain regardless of format. Retyping the works of Shakespeare shouldnt let you copyright them based on the fact you chose a different font, page width, line spacing, etc.

This kind of thing is an unfortunate grey area, while I believe the photographer deserves full credit and has a right to get paid. I don't feel that existing law properly handles 'reproduction copying' in a suitable fashion.

Personally I would licence any kind of photo-reproduction work I did with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs by default and offer alternative licensing like Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs on request for a small cost depending on what they were doing with it, Creative Commons Attribution for a bit more, or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike on request when it seemed appropriate.
Its my reproduction shot so I want to be acknowledged as the photographer and I don't want the reproduction modified as it is meant to be a reproduction shot, not source material for further works, however I'm not a jerk and I would happily give people needed permission if they asked and if they were trying to make money, then I would expect a payment in proportion to how important my stuff was to their work. If its litterally a block mount photo print of my photo... I'm expecting a percentage cut or big pay... if its used as a texture in a student developed game set in a museum or something like that... Id probably only want attribution.

As a 'semi-pro' photographer (Ive been paid for work but its a hobby to me these days) I totally agree. Someone taking a photo involves a lot of things that can make it unique and deserving of copyright.

However... I personally don't believe that a photographic reproduction designed explicitly for the purpose of optimum and faithful reproduction of the existing work deserves the full protections of copyright.
The principle I hold is simple, if your copying it like a photocopier would, trying to make an exact flat replica of the public domain original as if you laid it down on the glass of a hypothetical photocopier that it could fit on, it shouldn't matter how complicated your photocopier is. If your not changing the original it should stay public domain regardless of format. Retyping the works of Shakespeare shouldnt let you copyright them based on the fact you chose a different font, page width, line spacing, etc.

This kind of thing is an unfortunate grey area, while I believe the photographer deserves full credit and has a right to get paid. I don't feel that existing law properly handles 'reproduction copying' in a suitable fashion.

Personally I would licence any kind of photo-reproduction work I did with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs by default and offer alternative licensing like Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs on request for a small cost depending on what they were doing with it, Creative Commons Attribution for a bit more, or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike on request when it seemed appropriate.
Its my reproduction shot so I want to be acknowledged as the photographer and I don't want the reproduction modified as it is meant to be a reproduction shot, not source material for further works, however I'm not a jerk and I would happily give people needed permission if they asked and if they were trying to make money, then I would expect a payment in proportion to how important my stuff was to their work. If its litterally a block mount photo print of my photo... I'm expecting a percentage cut or big pay... if its used as a texture in a student developed game set in a museum or something like that... Id probably only want attribution.

Well, I don't know much about what an average Bangladeshi village has on hand but I'm going to wager that it's a very wide spectrum. So my personal advice is no matter what you find to be your solution, you should provide the DIY equivalent any DIY-able components of the pieces. In this way you can treat yourself as a one man thinktank and you can publish this stuff under CCBY3.0 and your project may enjoy self sufficiency without requiring your constant attention.

So to start at the core of it, I would personally select a $25 non-ethernet (Type A?) Raspberry Pi, an $8 USB keyboard and $5 flash card. From there those little devices have the RCA Video (analog) out and also an HDMI out. So if one of your computers goes bad, you can always rig it up to one of these little guys. However, I also understand that you need more displays. Now this is where you have the option to become a rockstar superman. If you are not afraid of code and working GPIO pins I would suggest purchasing some of these little guys first getting it to simply display and read across what they are typing and secondly maybe use one row to take in a file that progresses in typing difficult and displays that on the first line while it waits for input and validates on the second line (might even have room to use LEDs or something else on the RPi for score keeper/carrot/stick. If you document all this, it might turn out that the villagers get wise on how to ripe a seven segment display out of anything and hook it up to these GPIO pins?

So how to power this? Well the easy way would be to use what you have already available for power but get some of these guys and daisy chain these guys from one of your existing computers until they don't produce enough power. I would suggest researching that screen and the Pi and figuring out what their power draw is. Maybe get some cheap fuses to protect your hardware. A lot of broken appliances still have good electric motors in them and electric motors often produce energy as turbines if you spin them. Now, the big problem is how do you clean the power if people are cranking these turbines with their hands or connected to a bike's gear set? That's something I'm not much of an expert in. I do know the Pis run off of two rechargeable AA batteries just great but you also have to take care if they're planning to try to charge those batteries with a hand cranked appliance motor. From my understanding it's pretty tough to not screw stuff up if you're dealing with human generated power. Had to keep that steady and to find existing ways to clean it down to what tiny sensitive devices need.

The upswing of all this would be that the RPis are versatile, any of those students could really do a whole bunch of things with these. And if you make this a part of the Raspberry Pi wiki, you might get people helping you with those screens -- might. At least others will be able to use your work.

However most copyleft licenses are not revokable. The CC-by-SA 2.0 license in particular can't be revoked for anybody who has obtained content distributed in that manner. Ditto for something like the CC0 1.0 license that goes even further and is essentially placing something in the public domain... but with legalese to make sure it stays there.

Most licensing arrangements outside of the "copyleft" type are much more restrictive, such as granting exclusive sales for a region or country. In order for them to be revokable, they also need to include a clause so they can be revoked.

Billy Joel, to use an example of a musician who signed away the rights to much of his music through a more traditional contract license agreement, took decades to finally reacquire the rights to his own music when he wanted them back. He could have put a revokable clause into that contract, but for whatever reason he didn't.

The Creative Commons License that it was under gives you the right to do exactly that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Here is a definition of CC by SA

Is your google comprehension lacking? I highlighted that text, right-clicked, and selected Search Google for 'CC-by-sa' and this was the first result. Easy Peasy.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

While the intention of the CC licences may have been to encourage reuse by standardization, I find that in many areas, it's still quite murky.

For one, what's non-commercial? The FAQ doesn't quite say, other than to point you to a survey of what some people think non-commercial means, which is all over the map. If you've got a picture, and you merely reprint it, is that non-commercial? If you have ads on a page? If you're a non-profit? A non-profit selling (selling=dollars) tickets for a concert using an NC picture on a poster? Or is it only "commercial" if you're trying to resell the picture, either individually or on a CD, but mere use is not "commercial"?

It seems that NC actually restricts use to nothing more than school reports. Or would that be "commercial" if you go to a private school? Would use in a report (that you're not selling) be OK within a corporation? In the annual report? In a brochure for customers?

Then there's ND: "No Derivatives" The FAQ is equally muddy there, basically just saying that means no adaptations or modifications. OK, what's that? Can you crop or scale a picture? Or you can, if you're a lawyer?

Now, taking Wikipedia's BY-SA license: Attribution isn't a big deal, but Share Alike is a minefield: What's a derivative work? "Alter, transform, or build upon". If you incorporate portions (or even all) of the Wikipedia article on, say, Canola oil, into your annual report, is the report now CC? Or if you incorporate some or all of a Wiki article on a webpage as background info on your topic? Is the rest of the page, which you wrote, now virally infected with CC-BY-SA?

The two biggest sources of CC material are Flickr and Wikipedia. And, in the matter of a user being able to quickly know how he can use a picture or a Wiki article, he's left absolutely clueless. (Again, other than for school reports.)

While the intention of the CC licences may have been to encourage reuse by standardization, I find that in many areas, it's still quite murky.

For one, what's non-commercial? The FAQ doesn't quite say, other than to point you to a survey of what some people think non-commercial means, which is all over the map. If you've got a picture, and you merely reprint it, is that non-commercial? If you have ads on a page? If you're a non-profit? A non-profit selling (selling=dollars) tickets for a concert using an NC picture on a poster? Or is it only "commercial" if you're trying to resell the picture, either individually or on a CD, but mere use is not "commercial"?

It seems that NC actually restricts use to nothing more than school reports. Or would that be "commercial" if you go to a private school? Would use in a report (that you're not selling) be OK within a corporation? In the annual report? In a brochure for customers?

Then there's ND: "No Derivatives" The FAQ is equally muddy there, basically just saying that means no adaptations or modifications. OK, what's that? Can you crop or scale a picture? Or you can, if you're a lawyer?

Now, taking Wikipedia's BY-SA license: Attribution isn't a big deal, but Share Alike is a minefield: What's a derivative work? "Alter, transform, or build upon". If you incorporate portions (or even all) of the Wikipedia article on, say, Canola oil, into your annual report, is the report now CC? Or if you incorporate some or all of a Wiki article on a webpage as background info on your topic? Is the rest of the page, which you wrote, now virally infected with CC-BY-SA?

The two biggest sources of CC material are Flickr and Wikipedia. And, in the matter of a user being able to quickly know how he can use a picture or a Wiki article, he's left absolutely clueless. (Again, other than for school reports.)

I would be hugely pissed if some amateur took those poems and transmogrified them into some horrible high school poetry... and released the changed text under my name.

That's already covered by the license:

For the avoidance of doubt, You may only use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above and, by exercising Your rights under this License, You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties.

It exists. It's called CC+ .

More information: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus

It's not actively promoted by CC, but if you read that page you'll see exactly how it works.

-- a former software engineer at Creative Commons.

Photography is all rights reserved by default. So unless he specifies otherwise, he's completely within his right to ask that other people not use his work to make money for themselves.

Artists have the right to specify their own copyright terms and to some degree limit the degree to which their works can be used, or whether they want attribution.

In other news, if you make a detailed blog post on your personal site, with 3000 well-researched and cited words about the state of natural language writing tablets, and then Wired comes along and scrapes it off your site and prints it under someone else's byline, that's fair game to you? What, you weren't trying to make a profit off it, so why the fuck should you care?

5. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that is alleged to be infringed.

So while I'm sure that there are some false positives, there are some people that would submit things which weren't actually infringements, I think most people would think twice against submitting a takedown notice to Google that they knew was for non-infringing content. Google might send lawyers after them. Take down requests for non-infringing content may work to scare away the little guys, but I'm pretty sure Google ignores quite a few requests that don't follow proper procedures or that obviously aren't copyright violations.

With GPL, it appears that all you have to do is submit a change to get your name on the list of copyright holders, and you can apparently then sue on behalf of the entire software package. The original authors don't seem to have to be consulted.

I can't see this working as a matter of copyright law, but I don't know the US way of doing things. To my mind, you'd only have grounds to sue for an infringement in respect of the copyright of which you are the owner — if your change does not amount to a copyright work, I'd be surprised if a court would find you had standing to sue for anything, as your copyright has not been infringed. Making a minor (but still sufficient for copyright protection) change might be the way forward for that, though.

Theoretically you could (it's a grey area of law, copyright wasn't designed with source code contributors lists in mind). A single line on a piece of paper is a copyrighted work. The FSF preempts this possibility by requiring contributors to assign all copyrights to the FSF.

Note however, for the lawsuit to have any traction, there would need to be evidence that the license was being violated. Being a copyright holder alone is likely not enough.

This biggest disappointment to me is that, as with property generally, I cannot choose to disclaim ownership — for most of what I write, I'd rather simply disclaim it to the public domain. Whilst those using my work in an academic context will be bound by academic rules in terms of citation and the like, if someone else can benefit, great — since copyright was neither a driver not an enabler to the creation of the work, I'm unconvinced that copyright should exist over that work, but, since it does as a matter of law, I'd like to refuse to accept it. Which I can't...

You might consider the Woodie Guthrie license:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

the most open license

Thank you — yes, that's an approach which could be used to approximate the outcome. Similarly, I could use CC0.

The problem for me, though, is that it's an approximation, rather than the real thing. It's a licence, which requires something to be licensable, and, whilst the last attempts to be as far away from a restrictive licence as possible, it only work because of the existence of copyright, which is the very thing I wish to disclaim. Licensing under such terms might be the closest one can get to a voluntary gift to the public, but I still think it's a shame that I cannot abandon "my" copyright, forcing me to use a licensing hack instead.

from the article (in Polish):

all these resources will be available under CC BY, which is compliant with the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

And since I apparently mangled my link, that quotation is from http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

Music: http://www.jamendo.com/

Films: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Films

Remember to donate to any artist you really enjoy!

What makes them think that new media won't want to protect their copyrights just as much as current media?

Include in the financing conditions that the resulting film must be made available under Founders' Copyright, a time-delayed all-permissive license.

then immediately releasing it under a sort of GNU-type license that everyone can have free access to the work(s) in question.

Check out CC Zero. It's a very strong copyright waiver, designed with several fallbacks in case parts of the waiver are ruled or deemed legally invalid. It's probably the best copyright waiver/public domain dedication that exists at this point.

Check out Creative Commons Zero.

This, and you can always pair a public domain dedication with a CC0 waiver. They're two great tastes that taste great together.

If you are short of some good Christmas reading, you could do a lot worse than James Boyle's excellent book, "The Public Domain." It looks at a number of similar issues, critiquing the rise in the enclosure of the public domain, with the call to arms that, without defenders actively arguing in favour of the public domain, it will be gradually eroded by the proprietary claims of third parties, since it has no voice, nor lobbying power, of its own.

He has made it available in PDF under (CC) BY-NC-SA 3.0, so you can "try before you buy" or else not buy it if you do not want to but, in my opinion, it's worth every penny. (Although I feel rather stupid having a hard copy sitting untouched on my shelf, just so James and his publishers receive money, when the electronic copy was worth far more to me!)

David Bollier's "Public Assets, Private Profits" (sorry - Google link) is definitely worth reading, too, for those who care about the preservation of the commons.

Maybe it's different for you guys, but generally we know when we need to go to the grocery store. We use this innovative tool - we like to call it a "grocery list" - to which we add an item when we run out of it. Then, when we go to the grocery store, we take said "grocery list" with us and purchase the items contained therein. Note that we expressly do not limit ourselves to purchasing only the items on the list.

If we haven't gone to the grocery store recently, it's almost certainly due to our schedules rather than an inability to remember that we need to go.

BTW while I did come up with this great idea, let this post serve as official notice that I hereby release this concept under a Creative Commons Attribution 3 Unported license, with the following modification: I hereby waive the attribution clause for any and all users.

Minor edit. That should read: "Look into the Creative Commons system."

You'll retain the rights to your work, but make it available for others to use with whatever restrictions (or lack of) you so desire. If you want full control, they offer more traditional copyrights as well. The best part is that the licenses were developed by professional lawyers and they provide forms to craft the appropriate legalese for you to protect your work.

I don't know how it works, but I also recommend registering your work with the Library of Congress electronically for $35. This will get it registered in the National Archives, which is the greatest backup system in the world. This does copyright your work, which can conflict with the Creative Commons license... but since no one has brought the conflicting licenses to court AFAIK, I have no idea what it means to both Copyright and Creative Commons your work.

The language mentioned in the first paragraph in the parentheses appears here next to BY-ND.