[cc-licenses] (c) 2005 All of humanity

J.B. Nicholson-Owens jbn at forestfield.org
Tue Oct 11 13:34:38 EDT 2005


Greg London wrote:
> Assigning copyright to all humanity would be rather like having Alice, Bob,
> and the entire alphabet soup holding copyright on a work, and would require
> everyone's permission to create a derivative work.

Assigning copyright to all humanity would, theoretically, mean that everyone 
holds a copyright on the work and nobody requires anyone else's permission to 
create a derivative work.  This is, effectively, just like the public domain 
where copyright power is dismissed.

Talking about assigning a copyright to "all humanity" doesn't really make sense 
because some people live in countries that don't recognize foreign copyright. 
Hence, they aren't restricted in the way that, say, Americans are restricted by 
American copyright.



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