Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Diane Peters <diane AT creativecommons.org>]

Hi Luis,

Thanks for your comments, a few responses inline, below.

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Luis Villa <luis AT tieguy.org> wrote:

Hi, Diane, others-

I think I conceptually understand the distinction between the CC0 and
PDM, but I'm not sure the plain text of the human readable deeds makes
that distinction clear. In particular, I'm afraid that (to the casual
reader) their roles would look reversed. The PDM's first paragraph
contains no indication that the Mark was placed on the work by a third
party, while CCO's phrase 'the person who associated this work with a
deed' makes it sound like it is a third party who placed the work in
PD, rather than the (disclaiming) rightsholder.

We agree the distinction should be clear.  What we are striving to avoid is language that compromises the factual statement that a work is free of copyright restrictions (see Paul Keller’s response to this aspect of your email, below).  Introducing “belief” or similar concept in that statement does that.  We have tried in other ways to make that distinction apparent.  For example, we speak throughout the deed in terms of “the person who identified the work”, and separate the notion of identification from that of “author” in the work details section.  We agree there's likely a need to do more, however, and continue to evaluate other ways we might make this clearer.

I would alter them both to make that distinction more clear. In
particularly, I might make the first sentence of the PDM:

"The person who associated a work with this mark has indicated that
they believe that the work is free of restrictions under copyright
law, including all related and neighboring rights."

And I might make the first sentence of the CC0:
"The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the
work to the Commons by waiving all of his or her rights to the work
worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring
rights, to the extent allowed by law."

This is the same language we currently have on the mockup of CC0.  We're taking a fresh look at both and may have some subtle adjustments in the next version that help make clearer the distinction between CC0 and PDM. 

 

I'm certainly not settled on this language by any stretch, but given
the short timescale for comment, and the critical importance of making
this distinction very clear, I thought I'd go ahead and offer it for
comment while still imperfect.

Hope this is helpful-
Luis

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Diane Peters <diane AT creativecommons.org> wrote:
> Almost 1½ years have passed since we launched CC0 v1.0, our public domain
> waiver that allows rights holders to place a work as nearly as possible into
> the public domain, worldwide, prior to the expiration of copyright. CC0 has
> proven a valuable tool for governments, scientists, data providers,
> providers of bibliographic data, and many others throughout world. At the
> time we published CC0, we made note of a second public domain tool under
> development — a tool that would make it easy for people to tag and find
> content already in the public domain.
>
> We are publishing today for comment our new Public Domain Mark, a tool that
> allows works already in the public domain to be marked and tagged in a way
> that clearly communicates the work’s PD status, and allows it to be easily
> discoverable. The PDM is not a legal instrument like CC0 or our licenses —
> it can only be used to label a work with information about its public domain
> copyright status, not change a work’s current status under copyright.
> However, just like CC0 and our licenses, PDM has a metadata-supported deed
> and is machine readable, allowing works tagged with PDM to be findable on
> the Internet. (Please note that the example used on the sample deed is
> purely hypothetical at the moment.)
>
> We are also releasing for public comment general purpose norms — voluntary
> guidelines or “pleases” that providers and curators of PD materials may
> request be followed when a PD work they have marked is thereafter used by
> others. Our PDM deed as well as an upcoming enhanced CC0 deed will support
> norms in addition to citation metadata, which will allow a user to easily
> cite the author or provider of the work through copy-paste HTML.
>
> The public comment period will close on Wednesday, August 18th. Why so
> short? For starters, PDM is not a legal tool in the same sense our licenses
> and CC0 are legally operative — no legal rights are being surrendered or
> affected, and there is no accompanying legal code to finesse. Just as
> importantly, however, we believe that having the mark used soon rather than
> later will allow early adopters to provide us with invaluable feedback on
> actual implementations, which will allow us to improve the marking tool in
> the future.
>
> The primary venue for submitting comments and discussing the tool is
> the cc-licenses mailing list. We look forward to hearing from you!
>
> Diane
> --
> Diane M. Peters, General Counsel
> Creative Commons
> 171 Second St, Suite 300
> San Francisco, CA  94105
> office: +1 415-369-8480
> fax: +1 415-278-9419
> cell: +1 503-803-8338
> skype:  peterspdx
> email:diane AT creativecommons.org
> ______________________________________
>
> Please note: the contents of this email are not intended to be legal advice
> nor should they be relied upon as, or represented to be legal advice.
> Creative Commons cannot and does not give legal advice. You need to assess
> the suitability of Creative Commons tools for your particular situation,
> which may include obtaining appropriate legal advice from a licensed
> attorney.
>
>
>

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--
Diane M. Peters, General Counsel
Creative Commons
171 Second St, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA  94105
office: +1 415-369-8480
fax: +1 415-278-9419
cell: +1 503-803-8338
skype:  peterspdx
email:diane AT creativecommons.org
______________________________________

Please note: the contents of this email are not intended to be legal advice nor should they be relied upon as, or represented to be legal advice.  Creative Commons cannot and does not give legal advice. You need to assess the suitability of Creative Commons tools for your particular situation, which may include obtaining appropriate legal advice from a licensed attorney.