[Feature] Dedicate the rest of the legal tools’ text to the public domain #381
Comments
Jayman2000
added
✨ goal: improvement
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I’m now realizing that this problem is worse than I originally thought. The part of “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” that makes content available under CC BY 4.0 says (emphasis mine)
The “text of Creative Commons legal tools” is explicitly mentioned as something that isn’t available under CC BY 4.0. Since CC0 is a Creative Commons legal tool, this means that the text of CC0 is definitely not available under CC BY 4.0. This means there are parts of CC0 that aren’t available under any sort of formal license or public domain dedication. There is an informal (or maybe implied) license for the plaintext version of CC0 offered by the CC0 FAQ:
But that’s only for computer software and doesn’t give permission to modify CC0. EDIT: I’m now realizing that “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” also says
Perhaps that sentence makes the terms “legal text” and “legal code” equivalent. Does that equivalence apply to this sentence (one that is placed before that bold phrase)?
If it does, then the parts of CC0 that aren’t legal code are perhaps available under CC BY 4.0 (is “the text of CC0” the same as “the legal text of CC0”?). Another possibility is that the phrase
redefines the term “legal code” for that paragraph and makes “legal code” mean the same thing as “legal text”. In that case, the entire CC0 would indeed be available under CC0:
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All of the text that appears on the pages containing CC licenses and legal tools should be released to the public domain under CC0. (The licensing statement was written prior to clarifying which elements on those pages are and are not legal code!) The policies page has now been clarified to state that all accompanying notices on these pages are also released under CC0. Does this resolve your issue? |
Pretty much. I would only change one thing:
since CC0 isn’t a license. |
For more information on why I use 🅭🄍, see <https://jasonyundt.website/posts/why-do-i-use-cc0.html>. While progress has been made [1] into closing the 🅭🄍-not-available-under-🅭🄍 loophole [2] [3], it’s not fully closed. Creative Commons assigned someone to one of the issues, and that assignee said that 🅭🄍 __should__ already be available under 🅭🄍 [1]. This, unfortunately, isn’t quite the same as Creative Commons outright saying that 🅭🄍 __is__ available under 🅭🄍. Additionally, some text was added to CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code [4] which dedicates “the text of all of the notices and accompanying text on the license pages” to the public domain using 🅭🄍. The key words here are “on the license pages”. 🅭🄍 is not a license [5] so that quote, unfortunately, doesn’t apply to 🅭🄍. Ugh. With that in mind, I decided to still include attribution text for the portions of 🅭🄍 that are (potentially) 🅭🅯4.0 licensed. It’s probably not necessary, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. The content that this commit adds is in plain text. In a future commit, I might turn some of it into Markdown, but I want to set up pre-commit first [6]. [1]: <https://github.com/creativecommons/creativecommons.org/issues/1218#issuecomment-1212525987> [2]: <creativecommons/creativecommons.org#1212> [3]: <https://github.com/creativecommons/creativecommons.org/issues/1218> [4]: <https://creativecommons.org/policies#licensing%20statement> [5]: <https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-cc-licenses-operate> [6]: <https://pre-commit.com/>
In a future commit, I plan on adding a sound effect to this project. I’m not going to make the sound effect myself. Instead, I’m going to find one that’s either available under a free license or in the public domain. It’s more likely that I’ll end up finding a freely licensed one than a public domain one. If I do end up finding something that’s available under a free license, then that license will probably require that I include a copy of it. For the sake of consistency, this commit makes it a policy to include a copy of every legal tool that at least some content in this repository is available under. Since this repo already contains CC0’d content, this commit adds a copy of CC0. While progress has been made [1] into closing the CC0-not-available-under-CC0 loophole [2] [3], it’s not fully closed. Creative Commons assigned someone to one of the issues, and that assignee said that CC0 __should__ already be available under CC0 [1]. This, unfortunately, isn’t quite the same as Creative Commons outright saying that CC0 __is__ available under CC0. Additionally, some text was added to CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code [4] which dedicates “the text of all of the notices and accompanying text on the license pages” to the public domain using CC0. The key words here are “on the license pages”. CC0 is not a license [5] so that quote, unfortunately, doesn’t apply to CC0. Ugh. With that in mind, I decided to still include attribution text for the portions of CC0 that are (potentially) CC BY 4.0 licensed. It’s probably not necessary, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. [1]: <https://github.com/creativecommons/creativecommons.org/issues/1218#issuecomment-1212525987> [2]: <creativecommons/creativecommons.org#1212> [3]: <https://github.com/creativecommons/creativecommons.org/issues/1218> [4]: <https://creativecommons.org/policies#licensing%20statement> [5]: <https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-cc-licenses-operate>
Problem
I would like to use CC0 to help me dedicate some of my software to the public domain. I would like to include a copy of CC0 with my software since that’s recommended. Parts of CC0 are legal code, so parts of CC0 were dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Parts of CC0 aren’t legal code, so parts of CC0 are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Quotes from “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” by Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Quote from “Legal Code Defined” by Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)
I’m perfectly fine with adding some attribution information whenever I distribute a copy of one of the legal tool’s text. The problem is that most software developers who included a copy of CC0 with their code (or a CC license on their assets) probably didn’t know that they needed to provide attribution. I sure didn’t when I started using it.
Another problem is that this partial licensing situation is overly complicated.
Description
Dedicate the entirety of each legal tools' text to the public domain. This would remove the requirement for attribution and make the situation less confusing. It would also cure the accidental violations that have already happened.
Alternatives
We could add documentation that explains this and gives attribution instructions for the legal tools' text. This would make it more of a hassle to use the plain text versions of the licenses.
Another possible solution is to include attribution information in the legal tools' text.
Neither of these alternatives would do much to address the accidental violations in the past. Neither would make the copyright situation less complicated.
Additional context
It seems like CC intended to dedicate all of the legal tools’ text to the public domain anyway.
To me, legal text would be the entire text of a legal tool and legal code would be something different. Those quotes from “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” imply that they’re the same thing.
Implementation
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