[Clipart] Then what are the legal problems of CC-PD with regards to OCAL?

[Greg Bulmash]

The use of CC0 isn't a big deal for me as PD/CC0 are pretty much the 
same in the U.S. in terms of rights surrendered with the dedication, 
AFAIK.  It's outside the U.S. where CC0 seems to provide more protection 
to the end-users.

My problem is that in such a case, you then fork the library with some 
items being PD and some being CC0 and create confusion for users in the 
countries where the difference between the two matters.

But you cannot just convert all the older works from PD to CC0 because 
those new rights that CC0 covers were not explicitly given up in the PD 
dedication and they cannot legally be presumed to be given up.  If they 
could, then CC0 wouldn't be needed.  All the authors of the PD works 
would need to explicitly rededicate them to CC0.

This could possibly be set up with a simple click-wrapper on a jump page 
that each author is shown the next time they login to OCAL.  But you'd 
have to track which works have which licensing and the conversion of 
older works (especially the unported works from the previous 
incarnation) to CC0 would be a long and gradual process.

What I'm not clear on is which countries have the additional rights that 
CC0 covers and how much of a real problem the difference between PD and 
CC0 was causing.  I mean did the need arise after people were getting 
sued, arrested, and receiving nasty C&D letters, or was it someone 
thinking "this *could* eventually be a problem, so let's throw resources 
at it now"?

- Greg


Nicu Buculei wrote:
> Jon Phillips wrote:
>> I was trying to get us to be a launch partner for the big announcement
>> today at Emerging Technology Conference, but since didn't appear we
>> could come to agreement, CC launched with two science partners. This
>> is fine, of course. And, our discussion directly have been read at CC
>> by lawyers and the people in charge. Our conversation helped to shape
>> the course of CC Zero, and our project specifically has been a target
>> of CC Zero in the past as well, because I worked there and pushed hard
>> on this project for a few years.
> 
> I for one am *glad* OCAL is not a launch partner for CC0: from Rejon's 
> blog I know that CC0 was in the making for quite some time and if OCAL 
> was one of its target, I would have expected  us to be asked for input 
> during its making, not only after the fact.
> 
>> I've been lobbying hard for an updated CC PD dedication at CC for
>> ages, so hopefully you guys can see past the branding and look at the
>> functionality and how beneficial it is for our project.
> 
> In my perception, CC0 was crafted mostly for the branding, as the old PD 
> dedication did not have the words "Creative Commons" anywhere in its name.
> 
>> Ok, check out the link below and lets talk some more about CC Zero. I
>> still am hopeful we can come to a general consensus about using CC
>> Zero at some date for uploads.
>>
>> http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13304
>>
>> NOTE: To all, I'm just bringing this up for discussion on this list.
>> After we talk about, hopefully we can chart a course of action...
> 
>