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cc-licenses - Re: Founders' founders

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Tom Morris <tom AT bbcity.co.uk>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Founders' founders
  • Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 10:58:07 +0100


On 12 Apr 2004, at 01:37, Evan Prodromou wrote:
Well, be that as it may, the actual program to make the Founders'
Copyright work doesn't seem to have actually ever gotten off the
ground. So it's kind of a moot point.

Note that the Founders' isn't anything like the other CC licenses. You
can't just say, "This book/movie/photo is available under the
Founders' Copyright." You have to _apply_ to use the
Founders'. There's actually money that changes hands and some kind of
contract agreement that happens, and Creative Commons has some
bookkeeping it has to do.

http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyright/

If I can summarize: the deal is that the copyright holder sells their
work to Creative Commons for $1. CC then licenses the work back to the
copyright holder for 14 or 28 years. After that, assumably, the work
is dedicated the public domain.

There's supposed to be an online registry where all the works that
have been bought by CC are listed. There isn't one; my feeling this is
because no works were ever bought.

Maybe some works _were_ actually bought; there's not a clear record of
that anywhere I can find. Maybe someone else knows.

Surely it would be possible for other interested parties to do a similar deal. If CC don't get their act together and do so, perhaps a group of people unaffiliated with CC could offer a similar deal.

As for use of the licence, it would be interesting to note whether or not an author can make a pre-emptive public domain dedication. I.e. saying: "I own the copyright and all rights reserved, but in x years time, the material will go in to the PD". Currently, if I were to write a book, and placed a notice in the book saying "In 15 years time, this book will enter the PD" (or legalese to that effect), but I'm not sure whether that is binding on me or just a statement of intent. Also would it be binding on others - if I was unable to make a public domain dedication, but had asked for a PD dedication in x years, would others have to respect that?

--
Tom Morris
http://www.bbcity.co.uk





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