"Just as there is nothing in the law that permits a person to dump personal property in the public highway, there is nothing that permits the dumping of intellectual property into the public domain — except as happens in due course when any applicable copyrights expire. Until those copyrights expire, there is no mechanism in the law by which an owner of software can simply elect to place it in the public domain."
If you look carefully at the Creative Commons' CC0 license, and its associated documentation, you see that Creative Commons is fully aware that they're being... optimistic. See:
"Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database protection terms expire. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily and reliably. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by these owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about doing so and contributing their work to the public domain."
and:
"CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law." [note the couching st the end]
and my personal favorite couching:
"While we can't be certain that all copyright and related rights will indeed be surrendered everywhere, we are confident that CC0 lets you sever the legal ties between you and your work to the greatest extent legally permissible."
So in response:
> b) Creative Commons, which has a staff of lawyers, including very prominent and respected Lawrance Lessig
As I understand it, Larry's position on this is controversial. There is no legal instrument in US copyright law to allow for public domain dedication, and specific parts of US copyright law essentially forbid it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_Sta... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_th...
Larry Rosen (whom I hope you admit is no slouch when it comes to licensing) has this to say:
http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm
"Just as there is nothing in the law that permits a person to dump personal property in the public highway, there is nothing that permits the dumping of intellectual property into the public domain — except as happens in due course when any applicable copyrights expire. Until those copyrights expire, there is no mechanism in the law by which an owner of software can simply elect to place it in the public domain."
If you look carefully at the Creative Commons' CC0 license, and its associated documentation, you see that Creative Commons is fully aware that they're being... optimistic. See:
http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ
Some quotes:
"Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database protection terms expire. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily and reliably. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by these owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about doing so and contributing their work to the public domain."
and:
"CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law." [note the couching st the end]
and my personal favorite couching:
"While we can't be certain that all copyright and related rights will indeed be surrendered everywhere, we are confident that CC0 lets you sever the legal ties between you and your work to the greatest extent legally permissible."
> 2. re: "obviousness". There's nothing "obvious" about IEEE's greed. The stated goal of IEEE is http://www.ieee.org/about/index.html:
I didn't say it was good, or even moral. But to anyone who publishes papers with IEEE, or indeed most any other publisher, it is indeed obvious.