

Creative Commons announces the "Public Domain Mark" - dotBen
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/23830

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lars512
If it becomes popular enough, maybe in ten years it will have a unicode code
point, and will be found in common fonts ;)

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nostromo
c&#x20E0; (c⃠) is supposed to work, but I don't think any browsers support the
combining marks yet.
([http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unicode.o...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unicode.org%2Fcharts%2FPDF%2FU20D0.pdf))

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parbo
c⃠

It "works" in Chromium, but selecting the text is borked, and so is navigating
this text field after I pasted it..

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BCM43
c⃠ Works in FF 3.6.

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jeremyswank
The digraph mark N© has been in use for many years by the groups The Tape-
beatles and Negativland, for two examples. It was devised by the British
artist Mark Pawson in the late 1980s. (I'm not saying anything against the new
mark, just offering this up because it might be interesting to some.)

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yurylifshits
This is just great! I hope Flickr will adopt it immediately. Right now you can
not choose "public domain" as a default option for your Flickr account. So we
do not have any public domain pictures from there. Attribution is ok, but what
if you want to modify a picture or make a collage? Making a clear attribution
for Flickr is not always easy without adding clutter to your UI.

Looking forward for huge increase in public domain pictures :)

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angusC
Mine is up and running - thanks! <http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com>

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russellallen
I'm a big supporter of the Creative Commons project, but this is a good
example of the problems that CreativeCommons face.

Without wishing to be narky, your use of this mark is inaccurate. Your
material is not in the public domain, it is copyrighted to you. You should
instead be using CC0, which is the appropriate mark for works still in
copyright where the author wishes to disclaim all rights.

(And note that some part of copyright in major jurisdictions cannot be waived
- look up moral rights)

This is why this new Mark will be fabulous for widely disseminated works for
use in a low value environment. For a work to be properly usable in high value
environments, such as for a film script, the players will still need to do
expensive due dilligence. As the page for the public domain mark states, 'The
work may not be free of known copyright restrictions'.

This isn't a criticism of the CC efforts, just a description of the problems
created by the mess intellectual property is currently in.

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ars
How do you know his material is not in the public domain? By using this mark
isn't he relinquishing copyright?

You are just assuming he wants copyright, but it seems to me he doesn't.

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russellallen
His material is about javascript! It is not an official US government document
and he is living person who claims authorship. It is therefore not in the
public domain and shouldn't be marked with a Public Domain Mark.

He is not relinquishing copyright by using this mark, he is making a statement
that he believes that no copyright attaches to the material. Two different
things.

I'm not assuming that he wants copyright - he gets copyright whether he wants
it or not. I'm assuming that he wants to licence his material as freely as
possible. The correct way to do that is to licence his material under the CC0
or CC-BY licence.

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ars
No, he is perfectly within his rights to relinquishing/disclaim copyright on
his works.

In some countries that is not possible, but it is in the US.

I don't see where you are getting "no copyright attaches to the material" -
are you trying to say you think he doesn't believe in copyright?

You are really assuming a whole lot here. I'm going with the simple
definition: If I place a symbol on my works that marks them as "public
domain", I abandoned my copyright.

It's the same as putting the word "free" on a couch you don't want.

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russellallen
From <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/>

CC0

Use this universal tool if you are a holder of copyright or database rights,
and you wish to waive all your interests in your work worldwide.

Public Domain Mark

Use this tool if you have identified a work that is free of known copyright
restrictions. Creative Commons does not recommend this tool for works that are
restricted by copyright laws in one or more jurisdictions.

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pasbesoin
Also, the respective symbols/glyphs, for those who didn't recognize them on
the ur-parent's page:

<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>

<http://creativecommons.org/images/deed/nolaw.png>

and

<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/>

<http://creativecommons.org/images/deed/noc.png>

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regularfry
It might have helped the article to have, you know, included an image of the
mark. Just a thought.

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zbanks
It would be cool if governments could acknowledge this mark so it can be used
in earnest.

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hammerdr
According to its website, Europeana is sponsored by the European Commission
which is an arm of the European Union. I'd say that is a hefty acknowledgement
from a "government" (or, rather, a supernational organization).

But, yeah, I would love to see the LoC adopt this mark for its digital
collection. It'd increase visibility and give the mark an air of legitimacy
for the United States.

