Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Saturday 26 March 2005 01:01 pm, Branko Collin wrote:
> 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.

And who would they give this money to?
>
> > >> 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.

That is certainly how it should be but you still rin into the problem of 
determining what exactly is the original. I can imagine "authors" putting in 
booby traps along the lines of what I have heard map makers used to (still) 
do. (Introduce inaccuracies on purpose so that they can prove what you have 
is not a copy of the original and is indeed a copy of their "new" version. 
Then with statutory damages, they still stand to collect a bundle. Or they 
still have a big lever to use on you.)

all the best,

drew