[cc-community] Public-domain-style licenses (was Re: Why "Wiki license" = CC-BY-SA?)

Evan Prodromou evan at prodromou.name
Thu Jan 17 16:15:21 EST 2008


On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 08:42 -0500, Greg London wrote:

> Public Domain style licenses like CC-BY

I don't know why, but it just drives me around the bend every time you
use this term.

The public domain is a very specific legal term. Works available under
the Attribution license are not in the public domain.

I know you have good motives, Greg, but it's confusing for people when
you use the term "public domain" incorrectly. I know that you mean "very
liberal" or "contributing to a greater commons" or "belonging to
everyone", but I think it throws people off to use a well-established
term in a different way.

It's like if I said, "copyleft licenses, like
Attribution-NonCommercial, ..." and then insisted that by "copyleft" I
mean that the author has "left" the commercial use rights out of the
package. It's clever (-ish), but ultimately the confusion caused isn't
worth making my idiosyncratic point.

Could you explain why you use the overloaded term "public domain" for
these kinds of license, rather than finding a related and less confusing
one, like "public property"? "Group ownership"? "Free Cultural Work"?

-Evan
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