Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Mike Linksvayer" <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

On 1/17/08, Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 19:20 -0800, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> > CC0[http://creativecommons.org/projects/cczero] is a Creative Commons
> > project designed to promote and protect the public domain by 1) enabling
> > authors to easily waive their copyrights in particular works and to
> > communicate that waiver to others, and 2) providing a means by which
> > any person can assert that there are no copyrights in a particular work,
> > in a way that allows others to judge the reliability of that assertion.
>
> I have a few questions:
>
>      1. How is CC0 distinct from the previous Public Domain Dedication?

- The legal language is all new, and split into the entirely distinct
waiver (roughly dedication in the existing PD deed) and assertion
(roughly certification) cases.
- At least the idea that there will be support for
internationalization (and versioning)
- New metadata
- Intended to also handle waiver/assertion of no neighboring rights
- Intended to also handle announcement of not legally enforceable
norms associated with a work or discipline

>      2. What will be the future of the Public Domain Dedication
>         mechanism as CC0 goes to its "release version"?

The PD deed at /licenses/publicdomain is never going away (nothing
under /licenses is), but it's possible the PD dedication "chooser"
would be replaced with the same CC0 function eventually.

>      3. What is the advantage of the "CC0" brand over the previous
>         Public Domain Dedication? Is it a sufficient advantage to
>         justify any confusion in people's minds about the two projects?

I know nothing about branding, sorry. For the waiver case I'm more
comfortable with CC0 Waiver than PD because lots of people are
extremely skeptical that one can actually put a work into the public
domain, especially outside the US (IANAL and have no idea how much
skepticism is merited, but it definitely exists), but surely it is
possible (by definition) to waive whatever rights it is possible to
waive, even though the effect of doing this may vary by jurisdiciton,
because what can be waived may vary by jurisdiction. But take this
response with a mountain of salt -- I know nothing about branding and
-0 about law. ;)

>      4. How will CC0 be positioned next to the six core licenses? Will
>         it be an option on the license chooser?

The obvious placement would be wherever the PD dedication is linked
now, but  better ideas are welcome.

Mike