Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>]

On 26 Mar 2005, at 9:12, Rob Myers wrote:
> On 26 Mar 2005, at 02:34, drew Roberts wrote:

> > Do you need to claim authorship in order to relicense and claim
> > copyright to something in the public domain?
> 
> You get copyright in anything you write automatically, so you don't
> have to claim it in order to have it.
> 
> Since you get it automatically you do have to make an effort to 
> dedicate it to the public domain. I'm sure I've heard that there are
> some jurisdictions where copyright is inalienable so you can't do
> this. I don't remember where though. I think it might have been
> somewhere in Scandinavia.

I think (IANAL) there may be the following problems: 
- Some rights (some moral for instance) are inalienable
- Copyright enforcement is spread over several institutions, courts 
of law only being one of them

IIRC, in the Netherlands the collection agencies (the ones that make 
some wholesale copying possible and legal) are opposing public domain 
dedications. That is, I as an author can legally dedicate a work to 
the public domain, but a radio station that only plays songs that 
were dedicated to the PD will still have to pay levies.

> >> Of course you cannot claim that you wrote Shakespear, but can't you
> >> print and sell a Book of Shakespear and mark it "All Rights
> >> Reserved"?
> >
> > People seem to do things like this all the time. Still:
> 
> You cannot legally do this. In the US it's actually an offence to do
> so, I'm told.

Australia too, but I have yet to hear about legal action based on 
this part of the law. Pity.

> > So, perhaps they are claiming copyright in the layout, typography,
> > selection of works and order of works chosen. Illustrations? I don't
> > know. But I do remember reading something like I said recently. I
> > don't know if it is correct, and if it is if it applies everywhere.
> 
> You would need to claim copyright on either the typographic
> arrangement or, if you add or combine stuff, the aggregate work. Dover
> and clip art publishers do the aggregate thing, I'm guessing
> Shakespeare republishers do the typography thing.

In many jurisdictions you need to do more than sweat of the brow work 
to claim a copyright on the derivative, and the orginal work is still 
not copyrighted. That is, if you can extract the original from the 
derivative, you are in the clear. YMMV. IANAL.

-- 
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl