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

Elizabeth Stark estark at law.harvard.edu
Thu Jan 17 16:26:18 EST 2008


Also, if anyone is interested in reading more about this, see, for example:

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/enriching%20discourse%20on%20public%20domains.pdf

On Jan 17, 2008 4:20 PM, Elizabeth Stark <estark at law.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Sorry to confuse things even further, but some legal scholars do consider
> works like those under CC-BY as a part of the "public domain."
>
> In short, there are many different conceptions of public domain. One of
> them, and it may be the most prominent, would be works free from copyright
> (and patent) exclusive rights. And I agree that it's probably best to use it
> that way in this case. But that's not the only definition.
>
> And to confuse yet again, under that definition, works under the CC PD
> dedication may not technically be in the public domain, as they're
> copyrighted works released under a particular license. They could be said,
> though, to emulate being in the public domain.
>
> -E
>
> On Jan 17, 2008 4:15 PM, Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name> wrote:
>
> >  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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> > cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
> >
> >
>
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