Development of Creative Commons licenses

["J.B. Nicholson-Owens" <jbn AT forestfield.org>]

MM Robinson wrote:
> I'm an artist working on a project concerned with copyrights and I have 
> a question that was not covered in the FAQ. If I use a public domain 
> dedication, does that make the material "uncopyrightable"? In other 
> words, can someone else legally copyright material that I, as the 
> creator, dedicate to the public domain?

As I understand it, the answer is no: what others can do is build on the 
work and retain (talking from the perspective of citizens of countries 
that ratify the Bern treaty) the copyright for their additional 
elements.  Depending on the kind of work this is, of course, the PD 
portion in the derivative can be extracted and used freely.

So, if I make a copy of the Mona Lisa and add in an image of a new 
deluxe automobile in the background, someone else can deal with the rest 
of the untouched image as they would any other work in the public domain.

There are different issues with different forms of expression in how 
practical it is to extract a PD portion of a work.  In a painting, this 
might be easy, less so with an audio recording, lesser still with a 
computer program.  Yet all of these are copyrightable works.  And, of 
course, the CC organization doesn't recommend their copyright licenses 
for computer programs.