Science Commons Announcements

["Donna Wentworth" <dwentworth AT creativecommons.org>]

Progress on the CC0 public domain waiver

September 2nd, 2008 by dwentworth

Over at the main Creative Commons blog, Diane Peters has the scoop on draft 3 of the CC0 public domain waiver, a tool for those who wish to relinquish their rights under copyright to a work, and mark it with machine-readable metadata for harvesting as part of the public domain. It is this type of tool that Science Commons advocates using in our Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data, a method for legally integrating scientific databases regardless of the country of origin. The goal of the protocol, to use Catriona MacCallum's phrase:  increasing the "Lego factor" for scientific data.

The news, in brief:  Creative Commons had added additional language to the CC0 waiver to ensure that it makes sense and can be useful for people across the globe. Explains Diane:

We remain dedicated to pursuing a Universal CC0, but with some substantial revision to the text. Here are a few of the changes you will see in draft 3 as a result of [the community's] comments and discussions:

• Inclusion of a Statement of Purpose that provides context and explanation for issues CC0 attempts to solve while also identifying limitations inherent in such an attempt;
• Clarifying language about the IP rights affected by CC0 through a new comprehensive definition of "Copyright Related Rights"; and
• Emphasis on the possible existence of privacy and publicity rights of others with respect to a work, and the need for those to be cleared where appropriate.

Creative Commons plans to take CC0 out of beta in late October or early November, and comments on this draft are due on September 26. If you'd like to check out the waiver or weigh in, visit the newly updated CC0 Wiki and subscribe to the cc-licenses mailing list.