What Is Public Domain?

whitefox writes: "The Seattle Times has an interesting article in today's edition on what is public domain. After sharing the experience one software writer had with businesses and people shying away from BitTorrent because they didn't understand the concept of 'public domain,' they take the reader on a tour of how public domain is being defined by groups such as Creative Commons and to the battle of copyright-extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft."

Comments

Part of copyright should be the right to not

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really that simple. A copyright holder should have the right to completely remove the copyright from their creation, and thus allow others to use it completely and freely without worry about any sort of licensing issues.

Re:Part of copyright should be the right to not

[einhverfr]

They do.

However, public domain is a larger issue than that, and a very important one. Copyright law was originally drafted for the express purpose of enhancing the public domain, not destroying it, as recent laws have done.

Re:Part of copyright should be the right to not

[lynx_user_abroad]

You misunderstand. If I'm the copyright holder, I own the copyright to the work and all of it's derivatives. I still own the copyright to every derivative even if the only derivative left in existance is in your posession. I can't prevent you from selling it (first sale doctrine) but I can prevent you from publishing it. For example, I can claim copyright ownership of a work (and enforce my right to prevent further derivatives) even if I only made one and I gave it to you.

Should my ability to relinquish my rights to a work be contingent on my keeping the original, or being able to recreate the derivative?

If you bought a copy of my DVD, I have the right to prevent you from making copies of that DVD. CSS assists me in protecting my rights for as long as I choose to enforce them. But CSS does not provide for the possibility that you might be authorized to make a copy. That's not a fault of CSS; CSS is under no obligation to offer that feature. But the law (DMCA) effectively prevents you from using other means (such as DeCSS) to create a derivative you're entitled to create.

If this were the only remaining copy in existance, and you wanted to assist me in publishing additional copies, my right to speak my own words would be infringed.

Some public domain charts

[tiltowait]

When works pass into the public domain

Growth rate of the public domain

Not whoring, at 50, yadda yadda, just thought this may be useful

turf wars

[YanceyAI]

"The Internet, once lauded as a frontier of freedom and a place for innovation to flourish, has become a battleground in an emerging war over who should own vast swaths of information and the next good idea." This is a nice summary, though I think it oversimplifies the kind of stuff we see from MS, ADTI, MCAA and RIAA.

Also, am I crazy or does BitTorrent sound very promising:

"With BitTorrent, clients automatically mirror files they download, making the publisher's burden almost nothing."

But won't this technology really push cable companies to penalize their customers for downloads?

Public Domain

[Craig Maloney]

I think I heard about this "Public Domain". It only applies to things that were created before the 20th Century, right? :)

Re:You can't abandon cars or real property

[miked50]

A cookbook can be put into the public domain, but a cookbook doesn't create a fire or health hazard as it attempts to prepare the meals it describes.


Neither does sourcecode. Someone needs to execute it. Just as somone needs to execute the action of lighting a match/stove/house on fire. Yes bad things can happen, but don't blame the cookbook/sourcecode if you're not careful. It's about time users take responsibility for some of their actions. e.g. Burn down the house while cooking, it's your fault. Send a million viruses because you didn't install anti-virus/used MS Outlook, it's still your fault.

Re:Not all bad.

[jguthrie]

Actually, yes I can argue against extending that copyright, if it means that I have to extend the copyright of all works of similar vintage.

The problem with the current system is that copyright law serves to un-publish works. You can't make copies of a work because it's protected by copyright, but it's out of print because the publisher (and, make no mistake, the publisher has all of the rights in the current system) has decided that the market for that work isn't large enough to be able to keep it in print.

Working against that are examples of very long-lived works such as To Kill A Mockingbird or "Peter Pan". The vast majority of all works don't have nearly the longevity of "Peter Pan". So, extending the copyright for all of those works simply because one of those works might be continuously in print for many decades leads to works that are long forgotten. We are basically destroying our cultural heritage by not allowing works to fall into the public domain.

The suggestion I once made, that copyright holders be required to periodically pay for copyright in order to keep it, was met with cries that I was trying to prevent people from becoming authors and that I was trying to starve current authors' grandchildren. This idea would allow works like "Peter Pan" to stay in copyright basically forever, (meaning "until the fees aren't paid,") and still become public domain as soon as interest flags sufficiently for it to fall out of print.

The only part of my idea that I have trouble defending is the fact that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about making sure that people can still have access to works that they didn't care enough about when they were first published to keep them in print. Why should anyone care about a zillion B-movies that no one is ever going to re-release?

Freedom Means People Can Choose Wrongly

[FreeUser]

putting a creative work like a song in the public domain can be dangerous. When I first started releasing my music, I wanted to make it free for people to listen to, copy and change. But I realised: what if the KKK made a propaganda video and wanted to use a song of mine in the soundtrack? If my work was PD, or even released under the EFF's Open Audio License [eff.org], they'd be able to.

Freedom means people can choose wrongly. I sympathise with how you feel ... I would hate to see one of my novels taken and used to promote religion, particularly montheistic religions like judaism, christianity, and islam (all of which I truly loathe equally). Nevertheless, giving up exactly that kind of control is precisely what we as artists have to do if we are to create a public commins in which our creativity can flourish. In other words, our creative freedom requires that we respect and defend the creative freedoms of others, even those with whome we vehemently agree.

So how do we handle this? I think the best approach isn't to control or restrict how people can use our work (what if I wanted to use your work in the anti-IP move adaptation of my novel? Your fear of the KKK has also made you restrict my ability to use your work as well, something you perhaps neither intended nor wanted), but rather to protect our reputations. My first stab at this is a Free Media License based loosely on both the GPL and the FDL. It needs some more work and certainly isn't ready for use just yet, but the entire license is designed with four goals in mind:

• Protect the freedom of the content (the four freedoms the Free Software Foundation refers to, applied to content and media)
  
• Insure the freedom of derivative works (no BSD-style loopholes to allow the MPAA, RIAA, or Microsofts of the world to lock down derivative works and thereby deny their use by future generations of artists)
  
• Insure that creative credit is given the original artist(s) ["enforced citation"]
  
• Protect the good name of the author by requiring derivative works to clearly differentiate themselves from the original work
  

My license is currently too complex IMHO ... I hope to have that corrected in the next draft soon. As it is an ongoing work in progress, I welcome any and all constructive criticism and in particular would welcome yours, as you have also grappled with many of these concepts in your license.

In any event, the result I am trying to achieve is that, yes, the KKK could use my material in a propoganda video, but while they would be required to note that they had taken my material (and credit me as the original creator of that material), they would have to make even more clear the fact that their use, while legal, is unauthorized and unendorsed by me (the original artist, and of course any intermediate artist who have contributed/modified the material in the meantime). Furthermore, any changes they may have made they must take responsibility for, by applying their name to the current incarnation.

Its ugly to have people like the KKK and Al Q'aida around, but so long as they are prevented from beshmirching your reputation you should be able to release your content with confidence. It is insuring that protection that is IMHO the most important aspect of any Free Media License.

Re:Public Domain is too free for most creative wor

[cpt kangarooski]

What you mean like the way that Marcel Duchamps painted a mustache and beard onto the Mona Lisa? He called it L.H.O.O.Q. It's somewhat funny, really.

Copyright is intended to get creative works out there so that people can do stuff with them. It is not intended to protect artistic integrity, in fact it is intended to prevent it. It is intended to get works into the public domain where people can change them, republish them, base other works off of them, etc. That's the _only_ purpose of copyright, in fact.