Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Diane Peters <diane AT creativecommons.org>]

[Apologies for the cross-post]

Hi everyone,

We're pleased to announce the launch of the Public Domain Mark.  Please see the press release attached, and pasted below.  We are delighted to have Europeana as a major, early adopter of the mark.  Their adoption is expected to result in millions of out-of-copyright works being tagged with the Public Domain Mark by mid- 2011. 

Europeana and CC (through our CTO, Nathan Yergler) will be announcing the adoption at the Europeana Open Culture2010 Conference, being held this week in Amsterdam, as well as publication of the public domain Usage Guide.  

This newest CC tool has required the efforts by many, including all of you.  We owe you all a sincere thanks for offering comments during the development cycle.  Its progression has been the subject of many policy, design and technical discussions at multiple levels.  One of the most important outcomes of those discussion relates to its current, recommended use.  The complication that territory presents -- that a work may be in the public domain in one jurisdiction but not in others -- is an issue on which there is still more to do.  The relevant take away now is that the Public Domain Mark at this juncture is recommended only for use with works that are free of known copyright restrictions worldwide.  We have also crafted important user-oriented notifications for the face of the deed, including an alert that the work marked may not actually be free of copyright everywhere.  

We have already started planning for next phases of work in this area and others -- look for more announcements soon.  

A final note about CC0.  As you may know from the public discussion threads, we took this opportunity to revise the CC0 deed to align it more closely with our new Public Domain Deed. This helps everyone recognize the difference between our licenses, which apply to works restricted by copyright, and our public domain tools.  One of the new features that both the CC0 and PDM deeds have in common is easy copy/paste html that allows for ready citation of the marked work.  We look forward to seeing that feature used with frequency to give authors of works in thepublic domain the credit they are due.

Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.  Thanks again for your ongoing support on this important work.

Best,

Diane

CREATIVE COMMONS LAUNCHES PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK; EUROPEANA AND CULTURAL HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS LEAD EARLY ADOPTION

San Francisco, California, USA; The Hague, Netherlands — 11 October 2010

Today, Creative Commons announces the release of the Public Domain Mark, a tool that enables works free of known copyright restrictions to be labeled in a way that clearly communicates that status to the public, and allows the works to be easily discovered over the Internet.  The Public Domain Mark effectively increases the value of the public domainby making works that are already free of copyright readily accessible to the public. TheMark makes it clear to teachers and students, artists and scientists, that they are free to re-use material. Its release benefits everyone who wishes to build upon the rich and vast resources that are part of the shared public domain.

Europeana – Europe’s digital library, museum and archive – is the first major adopter of thePublic Domain Mark. The tool will become the standard mark for works free of known copyright that are shared via the Europeana portal, playing an important infrastructural role in the EU’s efforts to ensure that all works shared online are marked with rights information.  Europeana, whose partners include the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, theBibliothèque nationale de France and Germany’s Bundesarchiv (Federal archives),estimates that the millions of out-of-copyright works made accessible via its searchable database will be labelled with the Public Domain Mark by Spring 2011. Europeana will announce the adoption of the Public Domain Mark at the upcoming Europeana Open Culture2010 Conference, to be held 14-15 October in Amsterdam. 

"The Public Domain Mark is a further step on the path towards making the promise of a digital public domain a reality," said Michael Carroll, a founding board member of Creative Commons and a law professor at American University.  "Marking and tagging works with information about their copyright status is essential. Computers must be able to parse thepublic domain status of works to communicate its usefulness to the public.  The metadata standard underpinning the Public Domain Mark and all of CC's licensing and legal tools arewhat makes this possible."

"An important part of our mandate is to ensure that digitized works made available through Europeana are properly labelled with rights information, including when a work is free of known copyright restrictions so that teachers, students and others can freely use it in their work, changing it and remixing it as they wish," noted Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana. "The legal and technical rigour applied by Creative Commons throughout the development process makes the Public Domain Mark the natural choice for Europeana's infrastructure.  We have also worked with Creative Commons and our content providers to develop a Usage Guide for public domain works to help users of cultural content use it responsibly – by crediting the provider, among other things."

The Public Domain Mark in its current form is intended for use with works that are free of known copyright around the world, primarily old works that are beyond the reach of copyright in all jurisdictions.  Creative Commons is mapping the next phases of its publicdomain work, which will look at ways to identify and mark works that are in the publicdomain in a limited number of countries. 

 

Creative Commons worked closely with Europeana and several of its members throughout the development of the Public Domain Mark.  That process also included a publicconsultation period and review by CC’s worldwide affiliate network comprised of legal experts from more than 70 jurisdictions. The Public Domain Mark, to be used for marking works already free of copyright, complements Creative Commons’ CC0 public domaindedication, which provides an easy and reliable way for adding new works to the publicdomain prior to the expiry of copyright. 

More information about the Public Domain Mark can be found on the Creative Commons website. 

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