discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Joseph Pietro Riolo <riolo AT voicenet.com>]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org> wrote:
>
> There is a logo for the public domain dedication --
> <http://creativecommons.org/images/public/norights.gif>.
> public_domain.php should reflect this.

I don't want to distract readers from the meaningful topic in this
discussion but want to point out one small thing that should not be
overlooked.

The logo at http://creativecommons.org/images/public/norights.gif
is a trademark with some conditions, see
http://creativecommons.org/policies.  What does this mean?
For the long answer, I only can refer readers to Chapter 20 in
the book _The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free
Writings, Music, Art & More_ by Attorney Stephen Fishman
(ISBN: 0-87337-433-9).

The short answer is that it is not wise to use the logo inside
a public domain material because the uninformed people who happen
to come across that public domain material may not know that the
logo itself is not truly in the public domain.  (Well-informed
people obviously have no problem understanding the difference
between the public domain material and trademark.)  The simple
solution is to spell out the URL:

     http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain

in the plain text.  People can always copy insert that URL
in the address box in browser to read the dedication statement.

For public_domain.php, I think that it is best not to mention
the URL for logo.  That is just a suggestion.


Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo AT voicenet.com>

Public domain notice:  I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain.