The document summarizes Creative Commons' efforts to support and enhance the public domain through various legal tools and infrastructure projects. It discusses why the public domain matters to Creative Commons, challenges around accessibility and supply of public domain works, and several Creative Commons initiatives including Public Domain Dedication, the Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol, CC0 for public domain marking and assertion, and plans for a copyright registry and workshops.

1. Creative Commons PD Legal Tools and Infrastructure 3 rd COMMUNIA Workshop Marking the Public Domain: Relinquishment and Certification Amsterdam · 20 Oct 2008 Diane Peters, General Counsel Mike Linksvayer, Vice President Presentation dedicated to the Public Domain .

3. Why does the Public Domain matter?

4. Why does the Public Domain matter? Because with the addition of “digital” and other key words, funders become interested?

5. Why does the Public Domain matter? Because “Why does the Public Domain matter” sounds like the topic for an essay contest?

6. Why does the Public Domain matter? Because communication requires the Public Domain like life needs oxygen?

12. How much does the Public Domain matter? Probably a severely under-studied question (or I could be severely ignorant)‏

14. Why does Creative Commons care about the Public Domain? History CC has its origins in an attempt to defend the public domain.

15. Why does Creative Commons care about the Public Domain? Fit Legal and technical expertise and tools developed to facilitate “some rights reserved” also apply to “no rights reserved” (and to “almost no rights reserved”)‏

16. Why does Creative Commons care about the Public Domain? Economics CC licenses facilitate more use by lowering transaction costs. Not low enough for some uses.

17. Why does Creative Commons care about the Public Domain? Demand Artists, educators, scientists and many others have requirements and use cases for an easily accessible and vibrant public domain.

18. Why does Creative Commons care about the Public Domain? Funding It’s a GOOD thing that some funders understand the importance of the public domain.

19. The Challenges: Accessibility and Supply

20. Accessibility

21. Accessibility Hard to locate Legal rules differ among jurisdictions No uniform markings or labels

22. Supply

23. Supply Few processes for dedication

24. Supply Few processes for dedication Laws continue to expand duration

25. Some Solutions: Accessing and Enhancing the PD

26. Public Domain Dedication Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol CC0 Public Domain Assertion Registry

28. Dual Purpose Tool  Certification a work is in PD (+ Certifier dedicates all her © interest)‏ Or  Dedication of all © interest

29. Limitations  US Centric  Porting required  Combines general assertion and legal conclusion

33. Open Access Data Protocol To be compliant, must meet design goals: [1] Promote legal certainty and predictability [2] Easy to use and understand [3] Lowest possible transaction cost on users

34. Open Access Data Protocol Implementations: [a] Must waive all rights necessary for extracting data and reuse [b] Must waive other statutory rights over data (eg., sui generis database rights)‏ [c] Not impose contractual controls (using contract to restrict extraction and use of data)‏

35. Status of Open Access Data Protocol Submission and review process under development Implementations: Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License CC0 (when finalized)‏ More Info: http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/

37. CC0 Legal tool enabling authors and © owners For more than just data: all works “ no right reserved” Design objectives

38. CC0 Two tiers of operation Waiver of all copyright and related rights Public license fallback Status

39. PD Assertion Division of Labor Experts about particular works aren’t experts in the particulars of copyright law. Certainly not in the particulars of copyright law of 100+ jurisdictions. The hypothetical expert in the copyright law of 100+ jurisdictions isn’t expert in anything else.

40. PD Assertion Division of Labor Ideal: complete decoupling Practical: curators have to give some signal

41. PD Assertion Metadata Building on ccREL Signal galore (results not typical)‏

42. PD Assertion Reputation Networks CC Network

43. Copyright Registries (and similar)‏ Facilitate metadata Join point for work and copyright expertise Facilitate provenance and reputation Facilitate discovery

44. Copyright Registries (and similar)‏ Registry as side effect Cultural heritage institutions Registry startups ... The web

45. Workshops

46. CC0 Workshop Objectives and background Share results of jurisdictional survey Interactive discussion: overview of CC0 Next steps

47. Certifying PD Works[hop] Approaches Challenges Business models (premature?)‏ Collaboration

48. Diane Peters [email_address] Mike Linksvayer [email_address]