There is significant debate as to whether public domain even exists except through copyright expiry. Indeed, the text of Creative Commons's "CC0" pseudo-public-domain declaration largely consists of admissions of this.
Why not use a public license like CC0 or CC? It'll accomplish the same thing and is widely recognized as valid.
Why do you mention the notion of expiration? Wouldn't that apply instead to old (say, pre-1923) works?
If anything, I believe the author's very right of placing a (recent) work in the public domain is what is debated. Which... to me is beyond unfair and absurd, but may very well be "the law"...
An interesting example appears in SQLite's copyright page [1]. They acknowledge that, even though the code has been placed in the public domain, some legal teams may advise their companies to purchase a license.
> An interesting example appears in SQLite's copyright page [1]. They acknowledge that, even though the code has been placed in the public domain, some legal teams may advise their companies to purchase a license.
This is very interesting. Can someone here please elaborate on it?
Although SQLite is supposed to be in the public domain, some jurisdictions don't recognize public domain, or some corporations might have legal teams that get very uncomfortable about the lack of an explicit license. In that case, you can pay $1,000 for a piece of paper that says you have the right to use SQLite. It keeps lawyers happy.
The legal trouble with public domain is the question "how did it get here?" In the case of expiry, that's simple: you can no longer assert control over the work- it's too old. In the case of a deliberate admission of release of copyright, how do you defend that? If, as a lame example, I take something that is public domain and claim it as my own work, how do you demonstrate that it's not? Because I'm not the original author? But that means that the author is still exerting some sort of implicit right, even if they don't pursue it themselves. This isn't a natural way of thinking about ownership, but it is a legal problem and so some organisations shy away from hard PD.
The fact that you are not the original author has nothing to do with the author exerting any control, it is a question of fact. Beethoven no longer exerts any control over the Moonlight Sonata and yet it is a fact that he wrote it and not you. Why should it be any different for a more recent work released to the public domain by the author?
See also the "Unlicense" for something explicitly designed for source code: http://unlicense.org/. I find this preferable to something like the MIT license because it doesn't include the annoying requirement to include a copy of the license with the software, which is especially problematic for e.g. javascript libraries.
My solution when I want to do PD for source code is to include a small statement referencing CC0, like this:
programname: Brief description of program
Written by My Name <my@email>, 2013
This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") is
released under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication, version 1.0, as
published by Creative Commons. To the extent possible under law, the
author(s) have dedicated all copyright and related and neighboring
rights to the Software to the public domain worldwide. The Software is
distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.
If you did not receive a copy of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication
along with the Software, see
<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>
I trust the CC0 dedication more than other options; it seems very carefully written.
Even if this crazy bit of non-license were interpreted as a license, all you are doing is claiming that you are releasing copyright rights. You are not releasing patent rights. So by using your code, I'm opening myself up to you suing me for patent violation. Furthermore, "to the extent permitted by law" could mean, depending on the jurisdiction, as "not". You've put the onus on me to determine whether your goofy pseudolicense is legal or not.
I think CC0 is very wrong for code. I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
It's carefully written to address your concern about "to the extent permitted by law", including a public license fallback:
> 3. Public License Fallback. Should any part of the Waiver for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, then the Waiver shall be preserved to the maximum extent permitted taking into account Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose. In addition, to the extent the Waiver is so judged Affirmer hereby grants to each affected person a royalty-free, non transferable, non sublicensable, non exclusive, irrevocable and unconditional license to exercise Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the "License").
tl;dr: It degrades to the MIT license but without the attribution requirement.
True, there is no patent license, but neither the MIT or BSD licenses nor the GPL before v3 have a patent grant either. You'd be slagging off projects from jQuery to Linux (GPLv2) to LLVM if you demand an explicit patent grant for everything you use.
I do find it worrisome that there'd be this much fear of the CC0 dedication, even if unfounded. Could my statement be rewritten to make it more clear?
> I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
Principle. I'm one of those nutters that hates all form of copyright becuase blah blah blah, information purity, I'll skip the lecture, though. We just don't want information we create to be distributed under terms at all, that it could just out there to be used as people will without needing to worry about the consumption of information the same way they have no concern using or consuming a hamburger and plate.
>I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
Your problem is with software patents. A dubious at best, outright unethical at worst practice that has hampered creative development in the last decades. A trend that would have made the development of a myriad of platforms from editors, languages and complete operating systems impossible in the past. It's misdirected frustration.
Case in point: Your refusal to use code based on its own merits.
>Furthermore, "to the extent permitted by law" could mean, depending on the jurisdiction, as "not"
Surely every license is, by definition, "to the extent permitted by law"? No court will ever interpret a license to be valid beyond the extent permitted by law.
There is significant debate as to whether public domain even exists except through copyright expiry.
Such serious claim requires some serious citation. It is certainly not true as stated, since all original works produced by the government are in the public domain regardless of when they were created (e.g., NASA images and many US coins designs.) The first Google result for [public domain existence debate] is your comment. I haven't come across any evidence that any such debate exists, and plenty of sources to support the fact of the existence of public domain (some given by others in this thread.)
Can you elaborate on what it means if public domain doesn't exist? In other words, what are the implications of doing it his way vs using that license?
As I see it, he's trying to remove himself from the concept of copyright entirely, so adding a license is against the entire point. Especially when that license effectively says there is no license, that seems like a caricature of exactly what he doesn't like.
I share a similar view, it feels very "clean" and refreshing. Put the content out there, let people use it how they want, end of story. Obviously, though, it's not practical for all use cases currently.
One reason is that those "public licenses" are still based on the notion that the creator of digital content inherently has some sort of exclusive authority over that content, which some content creators dislike.
I think the biggest problem is definitions. Keep in mind that copyright means very different things internationally. Let's compare the CC0 text to this one. Note that I'm not a lawyer, and this is mostly conjecture, but pulled from a reasonable amount of reading I've done on the subject.
Part 1: This talks about what copyright means. Given there is no universal definition, this clarifies exactly what is being given away.
Part 2: This is worth quoting.
. To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently, irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights and associated claims and causes of action, whether now known or unknown (including existing as well as future claims and causes of action), in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the "Waiver").
Notice how this is unambiguous, and takes into account many different cases. Compare that the the blog post:
There is no need to email me for permission — use my content however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.
First of all, what does use mean? Does that mean I can share it with others, and they have the same right to it? And is he allowed to take it back?
What happens if he decides he does not want to have people giving away his books anymore? He's not said that he can't change it in the future. CC0 explicitly says it last for as long as legally permissible.
Furthermore, what about in countries like Germany, where you can't actually give up your copyright? CC0 has a fallback (part 3) that essentially says "if I can't give up my rights to this, this is the license I am releasing it under", then provides a license with no restrictions.
I've been packaging software for Debian recently, and dealing with copyright stuff. When you start distributing data internationally for a large organization, you really want to make sure all of your ducks are in a row.
Now if whole music, movie and gaming industry could think like this:
"If people buy my ebook and then distribute it to 20 people, and each of those distributes it to 20 more, and those to 20 more … I’ve lost $76,000 in ebook revenues. Perhaps. That’s if you agree with the assumption that all those people would have bought the ebook if it hadn’t been freely distributed. I don’t buy that. In this example, thousands of people are reading my work (and learning about Zen Habits) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any content creator. Also: I’ve made more money since releasing copyright, by far, than when I had copyright." -From the page.
If a content creator wants to release everything they've ever created without copyright, or for free, they should absolutely have the right to do that. However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive, to say that only people that pay $1000 for a license can access the content, or that another company can sell access in return for $1000.
That’s good for any content creator
That's good for any content creator if they value in-discriminatory consumption, which they are under no obligation to value. A content creator should have control over their content. It should be just as acceptable for this author to want everyone to have access for free as it is for another author to want $10 for every copy.
If you love and agree with his view point, great, but so many people agree with him and then take it as far as "well this content creator is okay with it, so all content creators should be!".
But should that control extend to the right to make further copies? If you say yes, then you've effectively eliminated the creator's control over their work, since copies are effectively free to distribute. If you say no, then you're stuck with a policy that there's no practical way to enforce.
That question makes as much sense as asking if car owners should be able to give lifts with his own car.
I think that most copyright owners are interested in restricting the making of copies because selling copies is a source of revenue for them. Revenue with which they buy food, and clothes, and housing, and cars.
When food and clothes and housing and cars are all able to be freely copied just like music recordings and books and movies are, then the makers of media would likely be less interested in making sure they get paid for their work. If they need a new car, they can just copy one, for free.
I know why many copyright holders want to keep their (our, since I'm one as well) privileges. That doesn't mean I have to agree that we as society should grant it.
Sure you bought it, but what did you buy? Did you buy the rights to whatever you please with it? It depends. Say I only sell an MP3 through Amazon what are you doing? You're buying it with the following terms of use, which you agree to by the very act of forking money over for it:
2.1 Rights Granted. Upon payment for Music Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Music Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to the Agreement.
2.2 Restrictions. You must comply with all applicable copyright and other laws in your use of the Music Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Music Content. We do not grant you any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Music Content. As required by our Music Content providers, Music Content is available only to customers located in the United States.
Sure, and Amazon should be able to go after the buyer for the breach of contract. The people who subsequently got a copy (and didn't know of the breach) should not be bound by it, though.
Those people would be benefitting from the original pirate's crime. Generally feigning ignorance is not enough to absolve you from the responsibility in such cases. If you buy a stolen car (even not knowing that it was stolen) the police will take it away from you and will not reimburse you, and you may be even looking at jail time.
This kind of copyright infringement is not a crime, at least not in the US, and in this hypothetical situation it wouldn't be more than a ToS violation. Comparing this to stealing is specious.
If you want to demonstrate that non-colluding third-party beneficiaries can be sued for the breach of contract of a second party, be my guest, though (I honestly don't know).
The only way here to accept that content will be pirated but trust users to do right thing as well.
Many content creators put off users with their stupid DRM implementations. I remember buying a game for some $34 in 2008. But that game had 5 copy limit. Now I am what you can call a "regular formatter". Formatted PC twice, changed laptop and now I do not own license to that game.
Let user make copies, but trust that they won't copy them further.
But the issue here is not only the end users, but also publishers and others who could potentially make a business out of selling this authors work without paying him one cent. There is in my opinion little reason to want to get rid of ones copyright, it's better then to declare that it can be used freely without charge for non commercial use for example. Or if the intention is to sell it, simply not using any DRM schemes at all.
It is a thing in property sale, to occasionally contain contractual obligations that force the buyer to act in a certain way (you may not cut down these trees) and additionally force the buyer to keep that obligation attached to later sales.
On the surface, I cannot think of a good reason why that should not also be able to be applied to the sale of software.
Your comment basically just says "I think copyright should exist", but it doesn't really provide any arguments for your opinion.
My own opinion is that copyright decreases total utility/well-being of society, and I disagree with the claim that copyright is required to create works of art/media. For more detailed argument why copyright is not needed I recommend the book Against Intellectual Monopoly.
Copyright is the bedrock of much of the Free and open source software I use every day so in that regard I think it's a great thing.
That doesn't mean there are not improvements to be made to its application in practice, or that copyright justifies the use of any number of unethical tools (like DRM).
I should have clarified that. I do not want everyone to do that. Just that I hate the way RIAA and MIAA take the approach to other extreme and eat a lot of money that artists should get.
If someone wants to sell for $1000, I am in. But if some middleman wants to sell it for $1000 and give $10 to creator plus restrict me from using the content the way I want, I hate that!
>However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive, to say that only people that pay $1000 for a license can access the content, or that another company can sell access in return for $1000.
Why? That is not a right in the US the same way that free religious expression is a right. Copyright was left to Congress to define however they liked, later shaped by corporate interests and international agreements.
Regarding the morality of copyright: music, movies, books and so on are all part of our culture, and I find it reprehensible that you want to limit the sharing of our culture for 100 years at a time [1].
[1] Current copyright terms in the US are mostly life of the creator + 70 years, or 95 years for corporate works. 100 years is a conservative average.
Culture drives creative works, and creative works drive culture. It's harmful to the progress of civilization to limit the use of works too severely.
That said, I can't sleep in, eat, or drive good feels, so I'd like to derive benefit from what I create, at least while I'm alive. Unless a post-scarcity world happens in my lifetime, in which case I'll offer up all my work with minimal restrictions.
> If a content creator wants to release everything they've ever created without copyright, or for free, they should absolutely have the right to do that. However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive
Of course, the difference between these two options is that one requires a massive government bureaucracy and potentially millions of dollars of money and time spent in court.
The trouble is you cannot make a business out of this. Imagine if Valve did this. I brought Half Life 3 for £30. I then launch a web store and sell it for £15. I make a few hundred thousand selling a half price copy of a full price uncopyrighted game.
I think a lot of content owners are aware of piracy, copyright infringement and its benefits. The Game of Thrones director(?) was talking about the benefits of piracy recently.
A lot of content owners don't enforce their copyright, don't send out the hounds and I think a lot of content owners actually benefit from this. I have seen software creators detect pirated installs and instead of shutting them down talk about their small studio and ask when you have the money to buy the software. For some companies this is far more effective than adding a kill switch. For others it really isn't.
You can make a business out of this, and there are plenty of examples of it. Just because some people would buy HL3 from your store, some other people would not. Just because people can already pirate games, doesn't mean everyone will.
Just because someone downloads a game from a torrent site doesn't mean they won't buy the full copy.
Why would people pay for content that is freely available? Pretty much all content nowadays can be downloaded freely, that doesn't mean there's no business around the production of such content. People still pay money to consume media. It doesn't matter why people do it, if one can show empirically that people pay for content.
For example, I can download Cory Doctorow's books freely, but I choose to pay for the books. It doesn't matter why I do it, it just matters that I do. Just like thousands of other readers.
There used to be a website where you could buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (without the trademarks) for a lot of smaller price than the official version. That business didn't lasted long.
A lot of people like to pay for a service. They want to pay for Spotify, for example. It's a good service and it's priced correctly. Significant portion of Spotify users could download the music using P2P networks, but they kinda like the service that they're provided. The same applies to Steam, and Amazon's ebook store and so on.
Is it more difficult to create a business without copyright protection? Probably yes. Is it impossible? Certainly not.
Copyright is a monopoly which grants exclusive right to make copies. Monopolies should always be balanced to benefit the public, not corporations who are trying to make a profit.
It's pretty clear that current copyright law is too strict. The duration should be reduced to 5-10 years (which according to studies is the timeframe to bring in 90% of the profit for the work of art). I personally don't see a case for copyright laws at all, but we should start with 5-10 years.
The resounding success of Steam sales, the Humble Indie Bundle, etc. shows pretty convincingly that most gamers are quite price-sensitive. In general, the people who choose to pay for content out of the goodness of their heart, rather than because it's required or because it's less convenient to get it for free, are decidedly in the minority.
I don't think that's quite correct. I see "gamers" being more marketing-sensitive than they are price-sensitive. There are sales in many other places but for whatever reason they don't get as much public exposure as the Steam sales. Even though almost all of it can be acquired for free, people tend to contribute financially to what they think is the least fraudulent option because they certainly do see the service value in purchasing any kind of content. Unfortunately, when it comes to this content, most people also seem have no idea how the publishing business behind it works. Of course all the publishing companies want to keep it this way.
> There used to be a website where you could buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (without the trademarks) for a lot of smaller price than the official version. That business doesn't lasted long.
I'm not sure what you mean? CentOS and Scientific Linux, the two main RHEL clones, are doing fine, as is RHEL itself.
That anecdote was from the Against Intellectual Monopoly book:
>For example, Red Hat is a company that sold a modified
and customized Linux system with easy installation and many
other useful features. Although the underlying Linux system is obtained by Red Hat for free, the customization and testing conducted by Red Hat is costly. Using prices quoted on the Internet on July 10, 2002, Red Hat charged $59.95 for a package containing its system. Because it is based on the underlying Linux system, Red Hat must also make available its code to competitors.
>As a result, anyone who wishes to can sell their own “Red Hat” system. And, in fact, there were at least two companies, Hcidesign and Linuxemporium, that did exactly this. For example, on July 10, 2002, Hcidesign offered for sale Red Hat Linux 7.2 for a price of $16.00, about 1/3rd of the price charged by Red Hat. Linuxemporium.co.uk offered a similar deal.
>So how does Red Hat stay in business? For starters, it turns out that Red Hat sold many more $59.95 packages than Hcidesign and Linuxemporium sold $16.00 packages. Moreover Red Hat is a large well known company, while no one has ever heard of the other two, nor does it appear that they ever represented a dangerous market threat to Red Hat.
>How could this be? Or more accurately, how could this not be? Have you ever used software that worked properly? If you had a problem with software you bought, and had to call the seller for advice – who would you prefer to call – the people who wrote the program, or the people
who copied it?
>The story is not over yet, please bear with us. Taking years in writing a book chapter is not a proof of high productivity, but there is a silver lining. On December 24, 2006, we went back to the Internet to see what happened to these three companies. All three of them still exist, and many other have joined the game.
>After years of having all its innovations mercilessly “pirated” Red Hat is still the market leader, has a world wide web of offices, sells lots of Linux-based software products while also giving away lots of others for free and its revenues are soaring. Hcidesign, in spite the advantage of being a legal pirate does not seem to have done very well; it is still there, but it is selling very few products and all Linux-based products are now off its shelves.
>Linuxemporium had a more interesting life. After either changing its name to or been acquired by ChyGwyn, it is back in business under the original name and it is thriving. Indeed, it has pioneered an entire new line of business: it sells at positive prices software that is downloadable for free from the original companies, by claiming it sells “high class software for the cognoscenti”. The power and creativity of competitive markets sometimes surprise even us!
I feel like that snippet significantly misrepresents both the growth of RH and their current business model.
>If you had a problem with software you bought, and had to call the seller for advice – who would you prefer to call – the people who wrote the program, or the people who copied it?
And this sentence is particularly misleading. It kinda implies that RH wrote RHEL entirely, or that the authors of the software would be the best point of contact. Both are demonstrably false. Only a part of RHEL is written by RH employees, and one reason why people are paying RH is so that they do not need to interact with upstream developers (ie "the people who wrote the program"). LKML can be fairly abrasive experience.
Most of the stuff you mention are successful only because the massive scale they are operating on. Without copyrights I'm afraid that smaller entities would have even harder time succeeding when they can not use exclusivity as a leverage against the larger corporations.
Back in the day, you could buy netscape for about $30. Or you could get it for free- legitimately. The paid offering did not last long. When you legitimise "piracy" (not a good word, but you know what I mean), you can bet the price will approach zero.
Believe it or not, I have a thriving business where all the products (books and courses) are uncopyrighted. People will still pay for uncopyrighted works. I'm only one of many examples.
Good for him, he is quite brave regarding how much he uncopyrighted. But still, I checked just now and - correct me if I am wrong - not all his books are free, for example "The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination". Also, he is selling courses.
As I understand it, he is selling some products, and uncopyrighted some others for marketing purposes. Interestingly, some people will pay also for those works which are uncopyrighted. Still, it isn't the case that everything he offers is free and can be paid only voluntarily.
But by giving up his right as an author to decide how his work is copied and distributed, he has no way of enforcing that. Instead he relies solely on the goodness of his "customers" hearts. Most open source licenses understands this and keep a final say in how the work can be used, for example.
Agreed.
His uncopyrighted books are basically marketing for his paid courses, so yeah, getting rid of copyright can work well in such a scenario where you just want to reach a big audience.
For more niche books with only a small and professional audience i dont think it would work.
I have been following his blog since the beginning and I can tell you when he went the uncopyright route he wasn't selling courses. He started doing it only recently, he might have written commercial books though. I found one of his book on torrent site when googling for review (google didn't penalize pirate search results during that time) and emailed him about it. He basically said he doesn't care and pointed me to his uncopyright page.
I charge for pretty much all my products, including books and courses (except the blog, which is free). They are all uncopyrighted. Somehow, I still make a living.
Good for you. I think the great thing about "strong copyright" is that authors can opt out of it. That way the attitudes of majority do not get pushed down to everybodys throat. "Strong copyright" provides a foundation on which different groups can establish different copyright policies (such as copyleft or public domain) freely.
In comparison you can't build alternative copyright policies with "weak copyright" because there is no control. Instead a general policy is forced on all work.
I believe that choice is good, and that is why I am pro-copyright. You are free to relinquish control over your work, but allow me to make my own choices on my work.
You are assuming that restrictive copyright should be a personal choice. That is not a generally accepted concept.
The majority has many legitimate claims to restrict the power of an individual, in general.
I'm a liberal and totally believe that the majority has many legitimate claims to restrict the power of the individual. At the same time, I can't think of a situation where that justification is weaker than for creative works. As a general rule, society has more justification for regulating private conduct the more that private conduct has externalized impacts. E.g. we don't treat air pollution as a matter of personal choice because it harms others.
Most people have no problem with private property, but it is in a way more of an imposition on the public than copyright. If you own a plot of land on Manhattan, you didn't create that land. It was there before you existed. You didn't fight to take that land from the natives. Your ancestors did that. You can tell people who want to live on your land to find their own, but there is only so much of it to go around.
None of these justifications for regulating private property are applicable to creative works. If I write a program, I created it. It didn't exist before. At the same time, if I tell someone else to go write their own program instead of using mine, there is an infinite variety of programs that exist that they could write and call their own. They don't have to move out to Long Island, so to speak, to stake out their own little plot.
Yes, I was mostly expressing my personal opinion. I do recognize that some people think that authors control should be significantly limited or even non-existent. For those people I must just submit to "agree to disagree". I believe that the limits of author control are fundamentally almost purely subjective. I also believe that people having informed anti-copyright stance are still fairly small minority of the general populace even with the rampant "piracy" going on.
He's got a point. If you believe the singularity people (like Kurzweil) Human technology has always advanced exponentially. And, is there any evidence that copyright and patents laws have changed this much? Inventors will invent, and creators will create, and not much will change that.
Personally, I don't see a lot of rich artists, designers, musicians, inventors, scientists. But, I sure do see a lot of rich lawyers and business people.
> 4. What if someone publishes a book with all your content and makes a million dollars off it? I hope they at least give me credit. And my deepest desire is that they give some of that money to a good cause.
I don't believe him, and even if he thinks this way, he is the minority. Do you know the story about the bum who killed himself after seeing someone getting rich and famous from the song HE was playing in the streets? (my way)
It may seem like a strange motivation to you, but sometimes people say things because they want people to hear them, make things because they want people to look at them and use them, and write things because they want people to read them.
Not everyone desires to be rich or make loads of crash on their works. Not every desires attribution for works they make, either. For people consuming content, kill your idols.
> Do you know the story about the bum who killed himself after seeing someone getting rich and famous from the song HE was playing in the streets? (my way)
I don't know this story, but issues around homelessness includes (lack of) visibility of the work homeless folks produce, so it wouldn't surprise me if such a story existed. Also, please don't call homeless people bums, it is really insulting.
>Do you know the story about the bum who killed himself after seeing someone getting rich and famous from the song HE was playing in the streets? (my way)
I can't find any source but my guitar teacher used to tell me that there was a backstory about this music. It was originally played by a homeless guy in the street, some guy heard it, did it his way, became famous. The homeless guy hears that on radio one day and kills himself.
The guy in question is not destitute, if he were broke, he would probably care a lot more about people reselling his work or making money off his labors without recompense.
You are probably right that no one likes to see their work dragged through the mud, or have someone else get credit for it, or whatever the situation may be, but he is clearly stating he will take the good with the bad, because it is all worth it.
Do you really believe a publishing company is going to put money down to print a million dollars in profit worth of books based on free content?
If someone can make a million dollars off of something that is essentially free, that person must be adding something significant in value, otherwise economics just doesn't work that way. Does it?
In that kind of case, I think the ability to market the thing probably ends up being more valuable than the thing itself. There are probably hundreds of other songs or books that would be big winners if they had that kind of marketing skill behind them, but will remain obscure and worthless (at least in terms of income) due to a lack thereof. I think the person that makes a million dollars off of something like that would probably make a million dollars off of nearly anything that isn't terrible.
I believe Leo. If it actually happened though, I bet Leo would ask himself why if someone else made a million dollars off the material, why didn't he? In other words, what did the other guy do that Leo failed to do?
In the USA, and legally speaking (I know, YANAL), can this blogger really, truly give up copyright by just having a link to a notice like that at the bottom of the page?
I mean, you don't have to mark stuff as "copyright", and you don't have to register it, it's automatically copyrighted as soon as it's fixed in tangible form. At least since 1976 the USA has worked that way. So why should some carefully, but not legally, worded notice allow you to give up those rights? Can anyone point to definitive information about this?
In a practical sense these concepts only exist to the extent that the "owner" is willing to enforce them. If this guy says he has uncopyrighted everything and doesn't bother chasing after people for copyright violations, then there you go.
On the other hand I believe an officially registered copyright is required to merely go to court about a case, so if he says he's uncopyrighted everything, then turns evil, registers a copyright, and starts suing, I imagine that wouldn't really stand up so well to a judge in court.
Really though I find the entire concept of copyright and intellectual "property" to be pretty ridiculous and baffling so maybe my interpretation is wrong.
I believe an officially registered copyright is required to merely go to court about a case
No, you can go to court about unregistered copyrights. The distinction is with registration, you can sue for statutory damages, instead of actual damages, and that's where the real money is.
But again, I Am Not A Lawyer, and we always let lawyers speak about these things at hundreds of dollars an hour, so you just have mis-information until you pay someone to bring your particular case to trial.
IANAL either, but there exist legal tools like CC0 [1] for releasing your work into the public domain or, barring that, waiving as many rights to it as possible. That said, even the FAQ for CC0 [2] carries the following notice:
"Please don’t take the 0 (zero) in the name “CC0” literally – no legal instrument can ever eliminate all copyright interests in a work in every jurisdiction.
CC0 doesn’t affect two very important categories of copyright and related rights. First, just like our licenses, CC0 does not affect other persons’s rights in the work or in how it is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. Second, the laws of some jurisdictions don’t allow authors and copyright owners to waive all of their own rights, such as moral rights. When the waiver doesn’t work for any reason CC0 acts as a free public license replicating much of intended effect of the waiver, although sometimes even licensing those rights isn’t effective. It varies jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
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."
[1] See https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Incidentally, this license was developed by a US non-profit, so it's reasonable to expect them to have paid special attention to it working with the US copyright law.
No, you can't give up your copyright in the US, no matter how hard you try.
All works are automatically copyrighted when they are set down so you can't somehow avoid it or opt out. There's just no mechanism. So view a "dedication to the public domain" as what it is, an "irrevocable" license (which means "permission" not "contract") to the entire universe to use the covered works in any way without permission. While this license exists, if the author tries to sue anyone the defendant merely needs to wave around the license. This is as good as the public domain, right?
Nope. An author can always revoke a license that purports to be irrevocable after a set time. This is known as copyright "termination" or reversion. The law is very, very clear on this. There is nothing that an author can do, no agreement that he can make, that waives this right. You can pay an author a billion dollars to take ownership of a work and set it all down in an ironclad 50-page contract she can just go ahead and take it back anyway.
The purpose of this is to protect authors against signing their lives away when they are young and lack leverage. One effect however is to make all transfers and licenses contingent which in turn makes it impossible to actually dedicate things to the public domain in as real a sense as one would like.
* author can always revoke a license that purports to be irrevocable after a set time. This is known as copyright "termination" or reversion. The law is very, very clear on this. There is nothing that an author can do, no agreement that he can make, that waives this right.*
In the US, authors absolutely can give up their rights to a work irrevocably. For example, Michael Jackson did not own all of the copyrights to his songs on his death even though he wrote or co-wrote all of them. Movieland is filled with examples of screenwriters who gave up their rights to their (non-commissioned, i.e., non-work-for-hire scripts, aka "spec" scripts) screenplay in exchange for a one-time payment only to see the studio get rich.
You've mixed up US copyright law, which allows for complete inalienability during the author's lifetime and European copyright law's concept of "moral rights" which are not alienable but the other or others.
"What if the author is dead?
When an author dies, his or her termination right, known as the “termination interest” is inherited as follows:
if the author has no children, the surviving spouse inherits the author’s entire termination interest;
if the author has children, they split the termination interest with the surviving spouse — the children take half, divided equally among them, and the surviving spouse takes half;
if the author has children but no surviving spouse, then the children inherit the author’s entire termination interest (divided equally among them);
if any of the author’s children is dead, that child’s interest is inherited by his or her own children (divided equally among them); majority action by the children of the author’s deceased child is required to exercise that child’s termination interest;
if the author’s surviving spouse, children, and grandchildren are all dead, the author’s executor, administrator, personal representative, or trustee owns the author’s entire termination interest.
The author’s heirs (as listed above), or their executors, who own and are entitled to exercise more than one half of the termination interest, either individually or together, may terminate."
And in other comments, I addressed the works-for-hire issue, where the creator never owns the copyright to begin with. You can't terminate works-for-hire because legally the person who hired you is always already the author.
>* There is nothing that an author can do, no agreement that he can make, that waives this right. You can pay an author a billion dollars to take ownership of a work and set it all down in an ironclad 50-page contract she can just go ahead and take it back anyway. The purpose of this is to protect authors against signing their lives away when they are young and lack leverage*
Does that only hold for authors? Because tons of musicians and music bands have "signed their lives away" when they were young and they haven't got anything back.
Plus, how would this would work: "You can pay an author a billion dollars to take ownership of a work and set it all down in an ironclad 50-page contract she can just go ahead and take it back anyway."
Is the author then supposed to return the money? And what about all the damages to your business by getting the ownership of his work back?
I used "author" in the technical sense, which means all creators of copyrighted works.
The termination is far enough in the future that only now are some prominent musicians taking advantage of it, but there have been some stories recently. You have to actively take advantage of the law, also, it's not automatic. And there are often lawsuits.
None of this applies to "works made for hire," for which the "author" is for example a company. If I hire you to write a song you never were the copyright owner to begin with. This is a complex area and there's a lot of litigation about the distinction between works for hire and works that are written and then transferred or licensed.
I don't know the details of how it works with canceling my hypothetical "no termination only" billion dollar contract. I know copyright law but I haven't studied this area specifically. For the most part contracts pay the author a modest sum that covers a license or a transfer for a modest number of years. In fact a 20 year license should cost about as much as a perpetual license given that most works make all the money they're ever going to make long before that. So a termination under those circumstances doesn't involve any unjust enrichment to the author. And there can be no legally relevant "damages" that result from an author taking advantage of a law that has been in place for decades--it's your responsibility as a media company to know about these things, not the job of an author to decline to take advantage of his legal rights for your sake.
It's interesting that you can give away your copyright to another entity (if it's a "work made for hire") but you can't give up your copyright completely to place a work irrevocably into the public domain.
What if I create a legal entity, have it hire me to make a work, and then dissolve the entity? (That's mostly rhetorical; I expect the answer, if it exists, is messy.)
There's a difference. You never owned the work to begin with in a work made for hire. Example: a New York Times reporter never owns the copyright to his articles--they are owned by the NY Times from the beginning. There is no transfer. The article is in a sense written "by" the Times.
But if I write an article and then sell all the rights to the Times later, I can claw it back in a few decades.
The arguments are over what happens when it's not so clear. Like what if the Times contracts with an independent freelancer specifically to write an article?
IANAL, but the license to what you create is yours to set, it just defaults to copyright. If you say "I release this into the public domain", lo and behold, it has been done.
So, I as a mere human can't possibly determine what's public domain and what isn't? I have to put in the effort to track down the original source, and see what notes he/she/it/them put on the original, and if the creator wrote "released into public domain" you can go ahead and use it?
I confess that the very concept of "copyright" becomes more and more slippery the more you look into it. And the slipperiness is all to the benefit of the rich and powerful, and to copyright lawyers, of course.
I confess that the very concept of "copyright" becomes more and more slippery the more you look into it. And the slipperiness is all to the benefit of the rich and powerful, and to copyright lawyers, of course.
In the history of mankind, the concept of copyright has never been more coherent than it is now.
In the Middle Ages and before, copyright to the extent it existed was by fiat of the crown. Frequently, the crown (especially during the Elizabethan and post-Elizabethan eras) would use copyright and patent rights as political favors, transferring them at the whim of the current monarch.
Prior to the 1900s, copyright law differed in every nation. Books copyrighted in Europe, for example, were not copyrighted in the US, and vice versa. The Berne Convention standardized copyright law worldwide.
And note, Disney notwithstanding, the current craziness about indefinite copyrights and inalienable copyrights is a result of European artists' efforts to create an eternal copyright (see, e.g., "moral rights"). Corporations have very little to do with that effort and most are opposed to long-term copyrights since most copyrightable IP is generally not worth much and the costs of complying with old copyrights is extremely burdensome.
(Corporations much prefer trademark law, which is indefinite but only as long as the trademark remains in active use. Trademarks are far more valuable because they are not limited to a single fixed expression.)
> So, I as a mere human can't possibly determine what's public domain and what isn't?
You can, just look at the license. If one is missing, assume it's copyrighted.
> I have to put in the effort to track down the original source, and see what notes he/she/it/them put on the original, and if the creator wrote "released into public domain" you can go ahead and use it?
Yes? I don't see what's wrong with that, asking the author if you can use his work is just good etiquette, I'm sorry if that's too much work for you.
> I don't see what's wrong with that, asking the author if you can use his work is just good etiquette, I'm sorry if that's too much work for you.
Yes, it is too much work; it's often not even possible. This is the problem of orphaned works, where the authors are gone or missing and nobody knows who they are, etc, or the work was published anonymously, etc.
Tracing down the authors of works produced seventy or eighty years ago is actually really difficult. You should try it sometime before casually dismissing the concern as being born of laziness.
I've always wanted this to be the default, especially for source code. No comments at the top of every code file, no license file in projects. My programs don't need a license file to run, it doesn't help anyone write better code and it doesn't help anyone understand the code any better, in fact, it only gets in the way of those things so I don't want it in my source. If you want to protect you're content, only then should you have to deface your creation with all kinds of warnings and threats. I bet any one who takes any pride in what they create, die a little inside when they see a (C), (R), TM or FBI Warning slapped on their stuff. Imagine if every song contained mandatory lyrics describing the license (someone funny, please make that song) or every painting had a block of canvas reserved only for legal jargon.
> 4. What if someone publishes a book with all your content and makes a million dollars off it?
This is why the public domain does very much exist. Even though the author may have placed his work into the public domain, so that anyone can copy it freely, he still remains the author and another person can not copyright his text without his permission. Just as nobody can copyright the works of Shakespeare.
This is why it is important to make a distinction between a natural concept of authorship on one hand, and the unnatural and confusing commercial constructs of 'IP rights' on the other hand. As Richard Stallman correctly says, there is no such thing as 'IP rights' because nobody can even define them. There is just a bunch of different monopoly licences. Monopolies, on the whole, are a bad thing.
I went to Leo to inquire about permission to use that list for the site and was pleasantly surprised by that uncopyright policy. I am a big big fan of Leo Babauta and I think there a lot to learn from him (at least I do pretty often).
I am a big fan of copyright and not a fan of thievery. If rights-holders want to put their work in the public domain, fine. But you have no claim on the IP rights of others.
I'm reminded of Ramit Sethi (Of "I will teach you to be rich" fame.)
As he puts it, he gives away 98% of his stuff free[0], but charges premium prices for his premium product. The money compensates him for the money (and risk) he put into developing the premium product. [1]
[0]: As in beer.
[1]: I can only assume at some point that would filter back down to his free offerings and voila! New material!
No, it's not forbidden as a matter of statute, but you might be able to sue in civil court. There are plenty of things that aren't legal violations strictly speaking, but that someone could sue you into next Tuesday for.
I'll be doing that when I eventually move to some remote Bulgarian village. There are people that steal there (mostly gypsies), but out of desperation, not because they want to. As I intend to continue working in IT, albeit remotely, I'll be making way more money than I need to live - so I'll put up a notice that reads: "Don't steal - come in and take whatever you need. Maybe we can even have a drink if I have time." I hope this means I won't get my computer stolen, and what I can't eat - I don't need, so they're welcome.
Did you read the article? He says "copy it, put your name on it and make millions; I don't care". He even says "put nasty words in my mouth if you want". He's obviously OK with everything you mention.
Yes, you have my blessing to do this. In fact, numerous people have sold my blog posts in the form of ebooks on Amazon, with my name on it, without giving me any profits. They've also scraped my site and put ads on it. It's hard for me to be any clearer: I don't own my work, nor do I attempt to control it.
Cool, so I can clone and automatically scrape your blog, copy to other blog site with about page names altered, but I'll keep your picture, just change the name? Then I'll put advertising on it, build up a following then sell the whole site? Thanks!
Yep! And people have done this. I am not bothered by copying, but rather hope that some of the copying will go to building something better than just a copy. After all, nothing I've written is original, but built on the ideas of others.
Good philosophy, refreshing idea. I'd like to think I would do similar if I had a blog. Just be careful of people exploiting your generosity as per my previous fictional post.
Why not use a public license like CC0 or CC? It'll accomplish the same thing and is widely recognized as valid.