Copyrights, licenses, and patents grant an author a little control over how a work may exist in the world. However, there is a growing realization that everyone benefits, including ourselves, from sharing and collaborating on the creation of resources. The digital age is absolutely NOT a zero-sum gain.
I have been looking for a license that is open (all recipients may use a work as they please), copyleft (all subsequent modifications and distributions grant the open right), and simple (easily understood by the legal laity).
I like to spirit of the GPL (copyleft) but find the exclusive cannibalism to be troublesome in practice. Simple licenses, such as MIT or BSD-style, are very open, easy to understand, and thus, quite popular, but, simply by the fact of the licenses existence, still exert some restrictions. Finally, the public domain is the most open “license”, however, it allows anyone the right of exclusivity.
Essentially, I would like to grant a copyright to all of humanity so that anyone may do with a work as they please but can not restrict others from using derivatives as they please.
(c) 2005 All of humanity. All rights reserved.
or
(c) 2005 Whatever beings there may be, weak or strong, without exception, long, large, middling, short, subtle, blatant, seen, unseen, near, far, born, and seeking birth: May all beings be happy at heart.
Comments (4)
I have spammed a few mailing lists/interested parties, including OSI, GNU, and CC.
Dear protectors of the commons,
I am curious if one may grant a copyright to others, specifically everyone, and what implications that might have.
(c) 2005 All of humanity
It seems to me that granting a copyright to everyone would ensure most (if not all: royalties, source code) of the requirements of the open source and copyleft definitions, with the advantage of simplicity and compatibility with all open source licenses, while ensuring a work does not become proprietary!
Are there any immediate disadvantages or legal issues inherit in such a copyright?
Alex
I will post any responses I may recieve (with author’s permission).
As for royalties and source code: It might be the case that ‘all of humanity’ could demand a royalty of anyone who chose to profit from this work (perhaps a desirable feature — although “(c) 2005 All beings who accept this copyright royalty free” might alleviate this feature). As stated, any distributor has no requirement to release the source code, only the copyright of the end result.
Comment by Alex Genaud — 2005-10-10 @ 09:28:17
Any one of the copyright holders (any human) could distribute a derivative and copyright their modifications. It would be difficult (without the original) to distiguish between the original and proprietary parts.
It is not clear whether the proprietary distributor must note that some of the work is copyrighted by all of humanity. Thus, the possibility of proprietary derivatives makes all all-inclusive copyright effectively public domain — and with little or no precedent, it will probably be ruled as such — which allows full proprietary distribution (modified or not).
In Europe, one may not relinquish all rights to a work, most notably attribution.
hey alex, i didn’t see this in your discussion, wouldn’t this answer the need? check out their modular licenses.
http://creativecommons.org/
sk
Sharon,
I posed my question to Creative Commons (as well as others, OSI, FSF, etc). It was an interesting thread with a few twists. The (”I’m not a lawer, but”) consensus was that all-of-humanity is equivalent to the public domain except that, debatably, any party could request royalties. I still hold that the implication is interesting because it implies the public domain in Europe where one may not relinquish ownership.
I gather you were suggesting cc in respose to the three conditions: open, copy-left, and simple. However, what creative commons licenses fail to simply point out is that two works with different licenses can rarely be mixed together seemlessly.
I find the existing creative commons licenses to be riddled with strings. When Stallman introduced the GPL, the share-alike clause seemed like a good idea to non-commercial developers. Fifteen years hence we find some surprising implications which may not be universally appropriate. Creative Commons, as noble a project as it is, may be solving a problem that doesn’t exist for media producers. It comes down to the ability to mix or go it alone. Any variation and condition imposed above the public domain makes nearly all licensed media incompatible unless they have the exact same cc license. It may take media producers fifteen more years to realize that.
While most artists’ works will reach only a small, or no audience, artists tend to seek control for any commercial possibility. What they loose out on is the synergy that is only possible in a truly free environment (as in their own basement or studio). That environment (sharing with unknown contributors) had been nurtured in universities for decades in the case of software and can not be simply ported over to general media.
Like Europeans post-WWII who believe their diplomatic unity can be applied universally, it is geeks (not artists) who believe open source can be applied to general media. As a geek, I can only hope artists, politicians, everyone will embrace the public domain.
Alex
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