Copyfraud : Poisoning the Public Domain is an introduction to some of the ways that content providers (websites, publishers, etc.) abuse copyright protections when they use public domain materials.  A couple of minor points, however:

• The act of assigning a copyright to something already in the public domain is the issue; taking a Project Gutenberg text, formatting it, and publishing it is of great benefit to people, as long as one doesn’t claim protection that doesn’t actually exist for the material.
• The Creative Commons Public Domain Tools is not a license, nor is it  an attempt “to become the arbiter of  public domain licensing”, but a way to allow people to have an easy and effective way to display that a work belongs to the Public Domain.

found via LISNews

1 Comment

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  By walt crawford, 17 July 2009 @ 12:16 pm

  Good points, but I’m not sure they’re all that minor.

  CC0 is valuable in asserting something that’s not all that easy to assert–”I forfeit all copyright protection, period”–and one big reason for material going into the public domain is so that it can be reused, including new editions. Both are, I think, significant points; thanks for making them.

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