[Clipart] PD license

[chovynz]

I've been thinking about some things, and something keeps coming back to me.
If I upload something with PD license, there is actually nothing stopping
people or a business from taking that clipart, copyrighting it then suing me
for using my own clipart on my own website/book/CD
cover/tshirt/artwork/publicly available and viewed material.

Now obviously this has some problems that concern me greatly. First, it's
unfair. Second, ANYTHING in the PD can be copyrighted. Third: While I
respect a number of people, I don't trust humanity as a whole. There will
always be selfish greedy people. While I believe in helping/supporting
people, I'm also aware that there are people who don't give two cents for
the life of another person. These people have no respect for fairness, or
what's right, and there is nothing stopping them from taking a clipart, then
copyrighting or trademarking, which then means that the original PD clipart
is lost to the public. I think there is a majority of people that would
respect the PD license and would continue derivitaves in the same way. But,
all it takes is one person or corporation to do copyright something, and
that clipart is lost to the public for 50-100 years.

There has been a large effort on the part of CC and some other groups to
limit this unfairness, however everything on OCAL is in the PD. This
concerns me a bit.

The goal of OCAL is to provide better and better clipart over time. What is
going to happen when someone see's clipart they like and copyrights it, then
askes OCAL to remove it from their Library? What is stopping one person or
corporation from doing so, to ALL the clipart in the library?

I do not currently see a good solution to this problem, but I think it is a
future issue that needs thinking about and addressing.

Thoughts?


-- 
Cheers
Chovynz
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