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Under the copyright portion of the code (17 USC s 101):

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.

That definition include EVERYTHING that uses the original in ANY way. If you paraphrase or quote the original (or get too close to the phrasing of the original) you are building off of it (the particular expression, not the idea itself) and it is a derivative work. The real question is whether the use of the derivative is fair (the "fair use" balancing test), with the key being how much you transformed the work. In most cases this is so simple that people don't even think twice (a work took the plot of star-crossed lovers from another but in a completely new type of modern circumstance or that is a properly attributed one sentence quote). But in other cases, it can be much more difficult. The last thing a researcher wants is to have to worry about is whether his use is legally "fair" and instead should be allowed to do it, only bound by the ethics of the field.

While we are talking about mines, Share-alike is similar. It is a poison. Just look here. Someone uses by-sa and another uses by-sa-nc, you have to pick which you like better because you cannot use both.

Darn, my mod points just expired :) This is pretty much exactly what the OP asked for. Although, OP said "I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain", so may be CC BY-SA is more up to the task. It all depends on whether derivative works that go beyond verbatim quotation are desirable.

Some of need are vague and slightly contradictory when i read them.
Have a look at the Attribution-NonCommercial one that xkcd uses but that might interfere with journal publishing.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/

What to do you mean pirates if a pirate can access the file and they don't care about the copyright then it does not matter what license you use.

You lose all control over the material and some ugly things can happen.

The Creative Commons licenses give you excellent control and they have a helpful tool on the website to pick the license you want. And attribution is required in the license which will handle your citation requirement.

There are others including the GNU free documentation license is a bit more specialized, but CC should be plenty for your needs and most importantly has a community of users and attorneys backing it up. You can probably get quite a bit of help if you ever need to defend it.

And what he's probably looking for is CC BY-ND. "This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you."

Creative commons has a tool to help, and human readable licenses. I'd guess you can find what you need there. http://creativecommons.org/

That is actually quite unreasonable, as "profit monetarily" is too vague to define.

LOL, well I'm not a lawyer. There are people employed full time who are more capable of me in writing legalese. I want normal, non-business people to not worry about copyright law. You like a CD and copy it for a friend? Fine. Photocopy/email a cool news article to your mother? Fine. Sing Happy Birthday at your kid's party? Fine.

Sell the CD copy? Uh-oh. Trade it for some other goods or services? Uh-oh. Make that news article part of your own newspaper? Uh-oh.

Napster would not be okay, because they were profiting and involved in commerce. Pepsi would not be able to use songs in commercials or photographs in ads without payment. Neither would the Red Cross, even though they are non-profit, because they would be using commercial airwaves or newspapers.

Derivative works would be fine, so long as you didn't try to sell them. Kind of like that one creative commons license. I think it is this one..

I'm sure there would be loopholes and problems - I mean, it is property only in a legal sense, and all laws have flaws. But I think it would more accurately reflect reality, be easier to enforce, and not place such a burden on the average person. And because we are in the commercial realm, we really should be talking about shorter terms. I think 5 years is probably sufficient, 15 more compassionate, and 30 just absurd.

But if you want to get something real done, it's just stupid to limit yourself to only open source OR proprietary software. Pick the best tool for the job.

Be careful: sometimes, especially in cases of works under a "copyleft" or "share-alike" license, a work's copyright license limits which tools for the job are lawful. For example, some licenses require works to be made available in an editable format that isn't Java-trapped.* See, for example, sentences containing "Transparent" in the GNU Free Documentation License and sentences containing "technological" in CC BY-SA. You can use proprietary tools yourself, but you also have to make sure that the work can be edited with free tools.

*Term's original is historical, prior to IcedTea.

Does the end user need to be able to contact the copyright holder for additional rights?

You might be confusing Creative Commons's core licenses with CC+, a standardization of dual-licensing metadata.

The link is at the bottom of the page: http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

I'm not sure why they hide it. The bottom of the page contains this paragraph:

We also provide tools that work in the "all rights granted" space of the public domain. Our CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and our Public Domain Mark allows any web user to "mark" a work as being in the public domain.

I'm not sure why they hide it. The bottom of the page contains this paragraph:

We also provide tools that work in the "all rights granted" space of the public domain. Our CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and our Public Domain Mark allows any web user to "mark" a work as being in the public domain.

I'm not sure why they hide it. The bottom of the page contains this paragraph:

We also provide tools that work in the "all rights granted" space of the public domain. Our CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and our Public Domain Mark allows any web user to "mark" a work as being in the public domain.

I don't see that license on the list, is there another list? http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Absolutely, feel free to share. All my Slashdot posts are under CC0 ~

And yes, it's a very good explanation of monads. The usual problem these days is that people come to know about them through Haskell, and the first place where they see them in Haskell is the IO monad, and so the association becomes very strong on unconscious level, and hard to untangle (which is absolutely necessary to really understand what they do). This tutorial does a very good job at that.

One other I know of is this, covering monads from C# perspective (complete with using LINQ as syntactic sugar for them). But it's rather less gentle in introducing the basic concepts. On the other hand, it uses real-world examples of non-IO monads (in particular, it demonstrates how Maybe and lazy sequences are both monads).

Having written quite a few assundry Free Software projects myself, I actually came up with my own list through trial-and-error. It goes like this:

Basicaly, there are three levels of needs:

1. I want the entire program to keep my license when modified
2. I want my facility to keep my license when modified and distributed, but I don't want to restrict programs that use my facility to any particular license
3. I don't want any restrictions on the license that modified copies of my code have to use

For 1: use the full on GPL. For 2: use the GPL with linking and inclusion exceptions. Expat's license is an example, but many many libraries do this. Typically, this is just GPL with something like the following tacked on:

As a special exception, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it with other works to produce a work based on this file, this file does not by itself cause the resulting work to be covered by the GNU General Public License. However the source code for this file must still be made available in accordance with section (3) of the GNU General Public License

For 3: use Public Domain (preferably via CC0).

These are all the licenses a person really ever needs to use for software.

Even Creative Commons suggest that their licenses aren't used for code; they simply aren't designed to apply to it well, and Creative Commons don't suggest that you use licenses for situations they'd be inappropriate for. (On the other hand, you can meaningfully GPL an image, but only if the image has some sort of equivalent to source code, which would rather depend on how the image was created; this may be a bad idea for other reasons, though.)

There are a few reasons why I don't like Creative Commons, one of which is that they encourage people not to read the actual license text (just to read the "human readable summary"). But have a look at some of the restrictions one day. A quotes from Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported:

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation.

Bet you didn't know that was in there (no actual bet intended).
Moreover, most of the CC licenses hardly the easiest of licenses to read, too full of legalese. And which license? There are umpteen different ones, depending on which jurisdiction you want to cover. Not to mention the various versions (Flickr only let's you use version 2.0 licenses, rather than the latest 3.0 versions). Too much choice, leads to confusion.

Personally, what I want is a simple, short, easy to understand, weak copyleft (like Lesser GPL) for non-software. Does anyone know of a license like that?

I don't know either (the site is "Watching the Watchers"), but considering the licence, they have every right as far as I can tell to republish the article in the way they did. The link you provide is linked to from the bottom of the article.
The licence is Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). I cannot see anywhere on the Wikimedia blog how attribution should be given. My understanding is that in such cases how the WtW site referenced the original is sufficient. The relevant section of the licence is 4.b

If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; (ii) the title of the Work if supplied; (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and (iv) , consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). The credit required by this Section 4 (b) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all ...

---

And for the delitionists out there,

“I’ve written articles in many areas, and in many cases I could show my colleagues what I had done in their field,” Michel says. “I’d like to think that by now most of them have a favorable opinion of Wikipedia. Let’s face it: Guillaume de Dole, now a Good Article, there’s no database entry or encyclopedic article anywhere that compares to the Wikipedia article on that poem (and I realize that that says as much about Wikipedia as about the anywhere else).”

I will hide here: http://www.jamendo.com/
Or here: http://listen.grooveshark.com/
And here: http://www.fsf.org/
And definitely here: http://creativecommons.org/
And why not here: http://www.fanfiction.net/
Or here: http://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks
... and a myriad of other places on the Internet, including those where I publish my own works.

That being said, I don't think abolishing copyright will mean the end of commercial media, since there are many other ways to make money from them. For example, most blockbuster movies make most of their profit in the first one or two weeks, and people are willing to pay a premium to see the film early, with high quality, and added value features like 3D and advanced sound systems. TV productions are almost entirely financed by advertisements, not future DVD sales. Most artists already earn most of their income from concerts, not from CD/downloadable music sales. And so on.

The three layer model used by Creative Commons is a great method of making licenses effective but unintimidating.

Have a look at this relatively burdensome lawyer-readable version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode
and then have a look at the "human-readable" version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Then concurrent with both of those, there is the machine-readable version, so automation is facilitated.

I understand that more-closed licenses have more particulars, but one would think there could be ways to adopt this general form.

The three layer model used by Creative Commons is a great method of making licenses effective but unintimidating.

Have a look at this relatively burdensome lawyer-readable version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode
and then have a look at the "human-readable" version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Then concurrent with both of those, there is the machine-readable version, so automation is facilitated.

I understand that more-closed licenses have more particulars, but one would think there could be ways to adopt this general form.

The three layer model used by Creative Commons is a great method of making licenses effective but unintimidating.

Have a look at this relatively burdensome lawyer-readable version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode
and then have a look at the "human-readable" version:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Then concurrent with both of those, there is the machine-readable version, so automation is facilitated.

I understand that more-closed licenses have more particulars, but one would think there could be ways to adopt this general form.

The difference is that this image is CC-BY-NC .

Form http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode Section 4 subsection b.

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

Looks quite cleat to me. The licence text doesn't even mention "commercial".

Just so you know, five years ago, a Dutch judge ruled that Creative Commons licenses are enforceable. See here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5823 . This is the Adam Curry case from 2006, for those who follow the history of such things. There was also a later scenario in 2009 that he also won.

Summary from the Wikipedia article:

In late February 2006, Adam sued the Dutch tabloid Weekend for reprinting photos from his Flickr page and publishing details about his daughter. The photos were released under a version of the Creative Commons license that forbids commercial use and requires acknowledgement, but the tabloid printed a few of them without contacting Curry.

The verdict of the lawsuit did not award Curry any damages, but did forbid the tabloid from reprinting the photos in the future, and set a fine of 1,000€ for each subsequent violation by the tabloid. It was one of the first times the license was tested in a court.

In May 2009, Curry posted on his blog information about a different Dutch tabloid publishing another Creative Commons licenced photo from Curry's Flickr account and Curry's attempt to apply Creative Commons license requirements. The publisher settled without a trial on Curry's terms.

Just so you know, five years ago, a Dutch judge ruled that Creative Commons licenses are enforceable. See here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5823 . This is the Adam Curry case from 2006, for those who follow the history of such things. There was also a later scenario in 2009 that he also won.

Summary from the Wikipedia article:

In late February 2006, Adam sued the Dutch tabloid Weekend for reprinting photos from his Flickr page and publishing details about his daughter. The photos were released under a version of the Creative Commons license that forbids commercial use and requires acknowledgement, but the tabloid printed a few of them without contacting Curry.

The verdict of the lawsuit did not award Curry any damages, but did forbid the tabloid from reprinting the photos in the future, and set a fine of 1,000€ for each subsequent violation by the tabloid. It was one of the first times the license was tested in a court.

In May 2009, Curry posted on his blog information about a different Dutch tabloid publishing another Creative Commons licenced photo from Curry's Flickr account and Curry's attempt to apply Creative Commons license requirements. The publisher settled without a trial on Curry's terms.

Surprise! The code was closed until the Humble Bundle and no one has started screaming about GPL violations since it's been opened up. So no, the whole basis of your reasoning is unsound, even if you sell software for a living.

Note to self: other people might have different successful business models which I don't know about.

> As far as I know, books, music and videos don't have a GPL equivalent that could poison the
> finished result so that it must be given away to be legal.

You really need to get out of the basement more. Firstly, GPLed code can be sold if you can find someone willing to buy it. It doesn't necessarily have to be given away for free (even if you are possibly correct in a practical sense). Secondly, see the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for books, music, videos, etc.

Oh, and lastly --- you actually didn't reply to any of my post, you merely unconnectedly knee-jerked anti-GPL sentiment. Now that you understand how wrong your assumptions were, you have a second chance to actually reply to my point.

Surprise! The code was closed until the Humble Bundle and no one has started screaming about GPL violations since it's been opened up. So no, the whole basis of your reasoning is unsound, even if you sell software for a living.

Note to self: other people might have different successful business models which I don't know about.

> As far as I know, books, music and videos don't have a GPL equivalent that could poison the
> finished result so that it must be given away to be legal.

You really need to get out of the basement more. Firstly, GPLed code can be sold if you can find someone willing to buy it. It doesn't necessarily have to be given away for free (even if you are possibly correct in a practical sense). Secondly, see the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for books, music, videos, etc.

Oh, and lastly --- you actually didn't reply to any of my post, you merely unconnectedly knee-jerked anti-GPL sentiment. Now that you understand how wrong your assumptions were, you have a second chance to actually reply to my point.

In what way does google own the definition of VP8?
Here is the VP8 bitstream guide for example:
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.webmproject.org/en//media/pdf/vp8-bitstream.pdf
It is published under a Creative Commons license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
We are free to share it or remix it with attribution.
-
BTW changes to the format of either VP8 or h.264 are not happening as without a fixed bitstream encoders/decoders are not going to
work, the fact that one was produced by a standards body the other behind close door has nothing to do with how open they are
now or if they are effectively Intellectual Property of a collective cartel or public domain/royalty free.
-
The codec and encoding/decoding is the collective intellectual property of Mpeg LA members and is indeed proprietary.

The point of DRM, from the publisher's perspective, isn't to prevent piracy - it's to delay it. Most of the sales will happen within the first week

Then why aren't video games released under a delayed-public-domain license such as CC's Founders' Copyright?

Music Copyright - Rich global companies making huge profits off other people work, some long dead

See? This is my problem. I think the real issue is that a lot of folks on SlashDot automatically equate copyright issues for music with the insane abuses and invasions that are committed by the RIAA and other major media companies. Unfortunately, it's pretty rare that the same group which throws up this same correlation thinks of the artists who are either independent, or for one reason or another are "represented" by one of said media companies.

Now look, before you go flaming me into oblivion, I'm not defending the RIAA/MAFIAA/whatever we're calling "them" this week. I think it's insane that they're trying to sue kids/grandparents for millions of dollars for grabbing some tracks off of Limewire or whatever. I get it. I agree that this is insane and is invalid any way you cut it. What I'm bothered by is that it appears that no one seems to come to the defense of the artist(s) whose livelihood is somewhat dependent on the exclusivity provided by copyright law. Now, a lot of folks like to take this view of "well, the artist(s) shouldn't be dumb enough to enter a contract with one of these evil companies", which is a very cogent point particularly considering advances in technology which make it very possible to do a lot of recording in relatively modest home studios. The problem is, this isn't going to apply to everyone, and sometimes, artist(s) are going to need some financial/business backing to get something off the ground.

If I compose a suite of music for a full orchestra and I really want it to be done well, it's not possible for me to have a full orchestra come hang out in my bonus room for week and let me record them take-by-take to capture my composition. If I were to partner with a large media company or some other vehicle of financial and logistical backing, I could probably swing this. I bring this up to point out that sometimes, there are some pretty good reasons that artists partner with "evil" companies. Thus, when said "evil" company is attempting to protect its own admittedly greedy interests in the work they've produced, they're also protecting the artist's interest. In other words, it's not always as simple as just striking out on your own.

I am someone who writes/composes everything I create, and I perform all the instruments on all of my work. I make music because I love it. I greatly enjoy hearing music in my head, and getting it fleshed out into a finished product. I do not depend on my making music to support me. I am fortunate to have a very good "straight job", and I have no illusions about "striking it rich" with a song. I choose to make most of my stuff completely free to download and offer most of it for use under the Creative Commons license in exchange for credit. I enjoy working with film makers and producers, and I feel good when I can let someone use some of my stuff in their work, and have it support the work in a way they find satisfying. I feel fine being able to make this choice myself, and am not trying to profit at others expense. However, as an artist, I reserve the right to try to make some money off of my work every now and again. I don't think I'm greedy or a jerk for thinking that if someone is willing to pay a little money to get a copy of my stuff on iTunes or pay me a little bit to use my stuff in their Youtube videos that I participate in the mechanisms that allow for me to receive money in exchange for my work.

By extension, I don't think it's totally unreasonable for artists to partner with either various unions like ASCAP or BMI to provide them this same mechanism. I had an

Today's DRM is so much more complicated than it needs to be. That complexity wastes everyone's time and money, and it creates unnecessary barriers to competition and innovation.

Since DRM rarely stops anyone who wants to bypass it anyway, it would make far more sense to just publish a standard for embedding licensing information into the media as RDF (Creative Commons provides an excellent example of how to do this), and do away with the pointless proprietary pseudo-cryptographic data-obfuscation systems that currently plague the industry.

In other words, make DRM restrictions advisory, rather than attempting (and failing) to make them mandatory. The downside of this approach is that a lot of people would undoubtedly un-check the "Obey DRM" checkboxes in their software. However, many of these people would bypass DRM restrictions anyway, and this needs to be weighed against the fact that we would finally get an *industry standard DRM* that everyone---including the open-source crowd---could live with.

Actually...
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

Give a pretty clear cut list of five specific conditions in which you may use a work without permission (aka without giving them money or asking them for usage rights.)

There is no good reason the CBC cannot approach the copyright holders of Creative Commons works the same way they approach the copyright holders of commercial works.

It's more than that. There are CC licenses that allow commercial exploitation. There is a "public domain" CC license. The CBC could use that content for whatever they want without any further license -- but not anymore.

there are endless variations of limitations on CC licensing

Every commercial track has a different separate license. CC is much simpler since there are only a few main variants with version numbers. You can simply say "CC-SA and CC-BY-SA are allowed CC-NC is not". Your claim is fairly simple FUD.

and it would be a nightmare for the CBC to track down and clarify the status of every single piece of CC music they wanted to use.

Wherever you download it from normally has the status. If it doesn't, that version isn't CC licensed and you don't have anything to track down.

It seems like you are making very weak excuses for some reason. Why?

As for of the claims by some uninformed people that a simple search on the internetz would provide unencumbered music, well, citation needed.

• jamendo.com
• creative commons search
• google

Would you bet your job on those results?

Guess what; there have been lots of cases where it was decided, after long court cases, that proprietary songs were copied from other proprietary songs without license. Would you bet your job on that? No, because you don't have to. If you had a good reason to believe the song was okay, for example the CC license attached to it, then you will not likely have a problem and if you do have a problem, the license the song claims to be under will not make any difference.

Finally, I'm seeing a lot of ant-Harper spam on Slashdot as of late, seems those poor anarchists and jackboot radicals are still smarting from their bad press after the Toronto G20 summit debacle.

Ahh. maybe we have the explanation; American style "two team" politics is creeping into Canada. This is not a "football" thing. You do not have to believe something just because it might be convenient to your team. Most of us on slashdot have barely heard of your "Harper" whatever he/she/it is and we do not form our views according to what might be most likely to damage "Harper".

Creative Commons stuff that is explicitly not licensed for commercial use is also explicitly marked as Non-Commercial (i.e. CC NC). Furthermore, by default commercial usage is permitted so all they'd have to do is look for the NC clause. It really isn't that hard to figure out.

My sales drop to close to zero after 3 years

Then try negotiating a time-delayed relicense with your publisher for your next book. The contract wording might look like this: "Starting five years after the date of first publication of the covered work, the author and publisher agree to allow distribution of copies of the covered work under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0." Or you could adapt the wording of Founders' Copyright.

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain.

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

There's no law saying you can't waive your own copyright, but it's an open question of interpretation whether you can or not. Read about it here. (Summary: If Alice says she waives her copyright on something and Bob uses it, the law may or may not protect Bob if Alice turns around and sues him anyway. To use an extreme analogy, it's impossible to give legally valid permission for someone else to murder you. Another part of the problem, apparently, is that the "public domain" isn't a legally recognized entity; it's just the term we use to describe absence of copyright. The law places copyright on your work automatically and it might be impossible, as with the murder example, for your declaration to stop the law from doing so.)

Hence, so-called "public domain–equivalent licensing" is used as a workaround. You can see this in the Wikipedia template that users use to place their own photos and such into the public domain: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." Creative Commons also has two lengthier documents meant to achieve essentially the same thing, although their Attribution license is nearly equivalent in practice.

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain.

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

There's no law saying you can't waive your own copyright, but it's an open question of interpretation whether you can or not. Read about it here. (Summary: If Alice says she waives her copyright on something and Bob uses it, the law may or may not protect Bob if Alice turns around and sues him anyway. To use an extreme analogy, it's impossible to give legally valid permission for someone else to murder you. Another part of the problem, apparently, is that the "public domain" isn't a legally recognized entity; it's just the term we use to describe absence of copyright. The law places copyright on your work automatically and it might be impossible, as with the murder example, for your declaration to stop the law from doing so.)

Hence, so-called "public domain–equivalent licensing" is used as a workaround. You can see this in the Wikipedia template that users use to place their own photos and such into the public domain: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." Creative Commons also has two lengthier documents meant to achieve essentially the same thing, although their Attribution license is nearly equivalent in practice.

There is no way to "create" a work into the public domain.

I call bullshit. This is the first time EVER (seriously) I've read anything like that and I think I know quite a lot about IP and licensing.

Do you know of any US law that forbids the author from WAIVING his/her copyrights? What happens after he/she waives the rights? The work should be instantly in the public domain! Refute my arguments, please.

There's no law saying you can't waive your own copyright, but it's an open question of interpretation whether you can or not. Read about it here. (Summary: If Alice says she waives her copyright on something and Bob uses it, the law may or may not protect Bob if Alice turns around and sues him anyway. To use an extreme analogy, it's impossible to give legally valid permission for someone else to murder you. Another part of the problem, apparently, is that the "public domain" isn't a legally recognized entity; it's just the term we use to describe absence of copyright. The law places copyright on your work automatically and it might be impossible, as with the murder example, for your declaration to stop the law from doing so.)

Hence, so-called "public domain–equivalent licensing" is used as a workaround. You can see this in the Wikipedia template that users use to place their own photos and such into the public domain: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." Creative Commons also has two lengthier documents meant to achieve essentially the same thing, although their Attribution license is nearly equivalent in practice.

Why thank you oh Slashdot contributor for your boundless wisdom. You must go forth and consult with the Creative Commons project on their CC0 waiver, because clearly they are chasing an utterly impossible goal.

Or, 'ya know, you're massively overstating the problem.

Legal != Moral. Just because something doesn't /have/ to be done doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Quite often, it does. Especially when you've sat down and written a detailed agreement that says this:

This License constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here.

See Section 8, subsection e.

Once you've taken the time to draw up (or adopt) a detailed contract or license, common courtesy is faithfully following the license. If your intentions and expectations for what your licensees are obligated to do in ordinary circumstances are not in the license, you have no basis to complain -- your failure was either your own responsibility or, even worse, duplicity. Serge Wroclawski chose the CCASA 2.0 license and marketed the heck out of the project using the moral authority of that license. If he wanted to to use a Open Source for the Little Guy, Screw the Man license, then he should have written one and lived with the inevitable criticism that the OSF and others would have heaped upon the project.

This circumstance is not at all like tipping. Tipping is a long established social norm that only applies in some settings. You may tip the waitstaff in a restaurant, but I'm willing to bet that you don't tip the counter worker at McDonalds, that you don't tip at restaurants that explicitly say that tips are not expected/required (why?), and that you don't tip the caterer that you've hired for your kid's graduation party (why?). As you've already acknowledged, you don't tip in restaurants where the facility says that the gratuity is included in the bill. However you want to characterize it, Secion 8(e) is a pretty clear statement that you're not in a 'tipping' situation. Custom is usually satisfied when you follow the written instructions given to you in a restaurant, and equally satisfied when you follow the written instructions given to you in a contact.

Projects cannot have their cake and eat it too. Plenty of software and data licenses, particularly old shareware licenses, very clearly laid out special requirements for commercial use. There is no excuse for not including such language in a license if that is the intended result. You and others are simply using 'common courtesy' as a convenient justification for a significant post-hoc change in the terms of the license based on the success of a particular user. That success doesn't place any additional burden on the project, unlike your order at a restaurant, so frankly I'm confused as to why you feel that any form of 'compensation' in excess of that requested in the license is either required or deserved.

Good suggestion, but keep in mind that CC licenses are not designed to be used with software. As they say on their FAQ:

Can I use a Creative Commons license for software?

We do not recommend it. Creative Commons licenses should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative. Unlike our licenses, which do not make mention of source or object code, these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.

CC is a great set of licenses, but as they say, if you're dealing with software you're probably better off using one of the licenses designed with it in mind.

The best way to put something as close to public domain as possible is the Creative Commons CC-Zero license. Anything less that that leaves too many legal uncertainties.

Depending on the exact letter of the law, it is not always possible to fully forego your copyright and/or authorship. Have a look at the Creative Commons CC0 license. That is the closest you can get to putting it in the public domain outright. After all in most jurisdictions (and certainly under the Berne Convention) copyright is automatic. You create it, you own the copyright. Getting rid of that copyright may actually be a problem.

Agreed. You can use CC0 to effectively release to the public domain via a Creative Commons licence. Then infringements aren't an issue.

hey everyone -- it's my picture of "Cory's Hammock" that appeared on boingboing: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/27/gone-fission----see.html i release most of my pics and academic writing under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is the license that was reproduced on the post. but when i put these pics up on Flickr after Cory sent the hammock [yes, there is some irony there. it is his hammock!] i gave him permission to use them if he wished. and he has. and it's ok with me. as some of the comments in this thread note, the definition of "non-commercial" is the most problematic thing about CC licenses: see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Defining_Noncommercial for background from the Creative Commons. however, in this case [and IP infringement decisions are based on specific circumstances] that definition is inconsequential, because my permission was granted. remember, CC licenses are non-exclusive, and the same content released under CC can also be licensed in other places in other ways. whoever started this thread didn't check with me [i'm not that hard to find] or with BoingBoing about the circumstances under which my image was used. my picture was 'Used with permission". i've suggested that the rights statement on BoingBoing be updated to make that clear. thanks for your help, everyone, but this damsel is not in distress! /jt

I don't know about you, but I didn't see any fixed-rate license variants on the Creative Commons licenses website

While it would take a more focused and exhaustive study to conclude that these seemingly fortunate attitudinal differences are correct, strong, and global, they do hint at rules of thumb for licensors releasing works under NC licenses and licensees using works released under NC licenses — licensors should expect some uses of their works that would not meet the most stringently conservative definition of noncommercial, and licensees who are uncertain of whether their use is noncommercial should find a work to use that does unambiguously allow commercial use