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Creative Commons Releases "Zero" License
revealingheart writes "Plagiarism Today reports on the release of the Creative Commons Zero license, which allows you to waive copyright and related rights to your works, improving on the existing public domain dedication. This follows-on from their original announcement on CC0. The CC0 waiver system is a major step forward for the Creative Commons Organization in terms of their public domain efforts. Even though it isn't a true public domain dedication, it only waives the rights as far as they can be waived (Note: Moral rights, in many countries, can not be outright waived), it opens up what is likely as close to a public domain option as practical under the current legal climate."
I will Waive my First Post
I find it sadly amusing that copyright and similar concepts has gotten so far that there should be countries in which it is not possible to waive elements of it
IOW, if you release a piece of code under CC0 and I use it as a basis to write a program which I then am marketing, you cannot revoke your CC0 designation and stop me from selling my program.
The BSD license is basically, "you may use this for any purpose, as long as you retain this copyright notice". There's also an implicit, "and as long as no other law prevents you from doing so". That's roughly equivalent to most uses of the Creative Commons Attribution license ("cc-by") (cc-by users can require that you "attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor", which could lead to more onerous requirements, but most don't).
This license removes even the attribution requirement, and attempts to waive all of those other implicit rights, such as moral rights in some countries. It's basically an attempt to come as close as possible to: you really can use this for anything you want, absolutely no strings attached, I really mean it.
For software licensing the difference is somewhat smaller, because non-copyright restrictions like moral rights are applied fairly infrequently to software--- they're more often applied to things like artistic works. I'm guessing that's why BSD-licensed software has never worried about it much.
You can indeed apply CC licenses to software, though I would probably only do so with the non-restrictive ones, like this one or cc-by. If you want to apply a copyleft license to software, using something like the GPL or LGPL is probably better than the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike ("cc-by-sa"), because it makes more effort to define exactly what the viral nature does and doesn't do, while cc-by-sa leaves a bunch of stuff vague when it comes to thinks like linking.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Unfortunately, the concept of "public domain" is nonexistent in some legal systems. Polish law, for example, is extremely idiotic in this aspect - not only it's not possible in Poland to publish a work anonymously to give it a public domain status (because the law states that for anonymous works, the role of a "temporary" author is to be claimed by default by the "collective copyright management institutions", read "RIAA-alikes", at least until the author decides to announce himself - and their primary objective is of course making money in every way imaginable), it's not even possible for the author to waive his rights to monetary compensation for his works and control over their current and future use - that is, given the wording of the Polish law, it could be argued that, for example, a programmer could revoke a GPL license on an already published piece of code, retroactively. This, sadly, means, that in Poland the "Zero" license means almost nothing - and it could easily be used by a dishonest author to sue someone using his work as if the author really waived his rights to it, and in good faith because of how the license could be perceived.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
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See thepiratebay.org for sort of an on-topic cartoon, if only at the opposite of the CC0.
that change, in any society, on any issue, occurs in one of two ways:
1. gradual, progressive, incremental change
2. stagnation, followed by massive revolution
#1 occurs when the system is such that it can absord gradual challenges to the status quo
#2 occurs when some sort of challenge, say, a technological one, such as the internet, represents such a dramatic fundamental modification to the order of a system, say, intellectual property law, that there is no way for the system to digest and incorporate
so this cc0 license, while laudable, seems to me like putting a bandaid on the stump of a severed hand: fruitless
no, he only thing that is going to happen here is revolution: individuals, not because they are amorla pirates, but just because they want to consume their culture (and it is their culture) within suitable parameters of inconvenience, will just reject the entire intellectual property legal system
currently, this is a very hot topic on slashdot, has been for years, but we are the canaries in the coal mine. none of this has really trickled down as a conceptual challenge to the average joe on the street. and when it does, and it is going to, the average joe on the street will, en masse, completely ignore current intellectual property law. he is doing so now, in dribs and drabs, subconsciously and not explicitly. but the tension will increase, and then boom: a veritable new legal landscape. change bubbling up form the bottom, rather than imposed from above
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hey, has anyone done the physics of this. Given that lawyers deal in quantum states (guilty/ not guilty; mine/ not mine) and that the participants are all identical (equal rights), then when you get sufficiently close to zero, Bose-Einstein stats apply and you get a condensate. I'm not sure what the actual entity then looks like, but there must be a physicist out there who has also studied up on what poets or programmers do when they can use everything.
Reading up on the Wikipedia < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_Condensate> article, the thing to be wary of is a bosenova - a spontaneous explosion in which a whole bunch of participants disappear. As a near zero copy-left condensate looks very similar to a communist state, it looks very much like an opportunity for someone to propose a Bose-Einstein-Lenin condensate, wherein all the workers are equal, until a megalomaniac arises. Or if the work is in programming, a robotic overlord.
Go for it. In the meantime, consider that if over the past 25 years instead of releasing free software, hackers had just waited for "someone to bring sanity to copyright" ... we'd be figuring out the best way to download Windows binaries without paying instead of having a vibrant FLOSS economy that outcompetes proprietary software in many ways. We have the same choice to make with culture now. Pegging hopes on copyright reform (when all such has been in the wrong direction for many decades) is a dangerous daydream.
We soft launched CC0 recently, and will be doing a hard launch in a couple weeks. If you want to know more, I urge you to check out http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0
Here's a copy of the page for easy reading. Please mod this up. :-)
About CC0 -- "No RightsReserved"
This tool is at 1.0 and is ready for adoption. If you would like to participate in a formal announcement, please contact legal@creativecommons.org.
CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright.
In contrast to CC's licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether - the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators - the "no rights reserved" alternative to our licenses.
The Problem
Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright term expires. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by copyright owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about contributing a work to the public domain.
A Solution
CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law. CC0 is a universal instrument that is not ported to any particular legal jurisdiction, similar to many open source software licenses. And while this means that CC0 may not be completely effective at relinquishing all copyright interests in every jurisdiction, we believe it provides the best and most complete alternative for contributing a work to the public domain given the many complex and diverse copyright systems around the world.
Using CC0
Unlike the Public Domain Dedication and Certification, CC0 should not be used to mark works already in the public domain. However, it can be used to waive copyright or database rights to the extent you may have these rights in your work. In addition, you should only apply CC0 to a work if you own all relevant copyright or database rights in it, or have the necessary rights to apply CC0 to another person's work.
If the people who did care about the damage being done by copyright (eg Stallman) waited for a revolution instead of acting, indeed, FLOSS as we know it wouldn't exist. Linus would've written code, as would've many others, but there would have been no structure for them to successfully collaborate in. It would have been an instance of failed sharing, even if they weren't conscious of it.
I've just been labeling my works "Copyright 1821 by The Joseph Wind Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved". Retroactive copyright extension has a while before it gets back that far.
You assume there's only one culture involved. In much of the non-Western world copyright is a culturally alien concept foisted on people as a means of economic colonialism. In many places it's worthwhile to encourage resistance to copyright instead of assuming that copyright is just there to stay and that observance of it can only grow.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
you are saying the desire to be free is only dependent upon dogmatic control as a contrasting agent
i assert to you that the desire to be free is an organic desire in its own right, with no preconditions
freedom is not a product of slavery. freedom is an original impulse
i really don't know how else to articulate how completely and utterly wrong you are. your idea of cause and effect is completely bogus
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I find it highly likely the easy availability of timed release would cause some authors who would have released immediately under a public license or into the public domain to use the timed release instead. Consider the simplest case, where one could choose a time delay from the CC license chooser. I bet many people would select it just because they could, just as well over half of people select the NonCommercial option, even though in many cases doing so is counter to what one would hope sharing to accomplish. One could attempt to segregate people one suspects would only free their works if they could do so in a time-delayed manner, but I don't know how one would do that well. Seems like something that should be studied in an experimental econ lab.
Why do you think I make that assertion? I do not. I agree with your assertion. There is always a latent desire to be free of a bad, whether the bad exists or not. I desire to be free of zombie attacks, right now, regardless of the existence of zombie attacks.
Let's go back a bit. I suspect where we might disagree is how one effectively rejects the strict regimen. I say the most effective way to do so is to unambiguously free your creative output, such that even one who does not reject the regimen understands that they are free to to use your creativity. Do you disagree with this? If so, what do you think the most effective way to reject the regimen is?
Isn't that the same as the WTFPL licence ?
CC0 is not intended for software. If you want copyleft for non-software, CC BY-SA is probably what you want. If you're against copyright there's something to be said for actually renouncing your own (which CC0 tries to do to the maximum extent possible), but I understand the appeal of using copyright against itself, and copyleft certainly has a big role to play.
Brad Kuhn of SFLC (formerly of FSF) put it very well:
Of course CC doesn't do software licenses and some of its licenses are only semi-free by the standards of free as in (software) freedom as applied to culture, but the overall lesson of the responsibility of license stewards applies.
And I didn't mean to imply it is either/or, either. :-)
I suspect that building voluntary commons (in software and culture) is probably the most effective means of advancing long term reform -- they demonstrate that restrictive copyright is not necessary for innovation, creativity, etc.