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cc-licenses - RE: Licensing of old out-of-copyright facsimiles?

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>
  • To: "Judith Combs" <jadelec1 AT san.rr.com>, "'Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts'" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: RE: Licensing of old out-of-copyright facsimiles?
  • Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:35:34 +0100

On 13 Dec 2004, at 22:11, Judith Combs wrote:

>
> I've been lurking and (I hope) learning at this list for a few weeks -
> this thread is on the subject I am also trying to figure out.
>
> I am a fiber artist, with a side interest in historical needlework. I
> have a collection of early (1840's - 1890's) crochet instructions,
> patterns and samples that I have been translating into American
> English modern terminology. I ultimately want to make copies of the
> originals openly available to anyone who wants to use them, as long as
> no one tries to restrict their use. I have *.pdf scans of most of
> them, and was hoping to donate them to an online university library
> who can afford the bandwidth to make them available. I want my
> translations available for people to crochet, but not to reprint for
> profit. I want my digital images of the completed projects protected.

What do you mean by that last sentence? Protected against what?

> So this account of a university trying to restrict the use of public
> domain materials disturbs me.

You are correct to be wary. I don't know about Sweden, but from what
I understand about the US, government cannot claim copyright on
anything, but as a matter of course still does a lot of times.

You are probably better off shopping for the very few institutions
that do the right thing. The Library of Congress seems to not claim
copyright on the public domain work in its collection, nor does The
Internet Arhive. The latter is a private organization, though.

> And needlework publishers have been
> "borrowing" patterns for profit without compensating the designers
> from the beginning of needlework publishing, and haven't stopped.

Well, there is nothing you can do to stop them from copying the
originals, and they have every right to do so. As this thread has
shown, you can claim to own the copyright on these images, and then
its up to who can afford to pay the best lawyer (and who is willing
to take this to court).

> Even though my webmaster skills are rudimentary, at best, I can see
> that publishing on the internet is probably the best way to make these
> materials available. Do I need to use three different licenses?

As I understand it, there are three objects:

1. original designs

2. translations

3. photos

#1 are in the public domain. You can claim otherwise, but there are
people out there who would not bend under bogus copyright claims, so
the usefulness of such deterrent depends entirely on whether somebody
takes you up on your challenge.

#2 seems best served with a CC-NC license.

As for #3, the best way to protect information IMHO is to allow for
as much dissemination as possible. There are currently two popular
approaches to this; one is to release the work as public domain, and
hope for the best. The other is a bit more cynical, and concludes
that everything in the PD will be recopyrighted by somebody else (the
FSF stance), and that it therefore needs extra protection. In that
case the least restrictive CC license seems the best.

--
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl




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