[d@DCC] International nature of the public domain?

From: Russell McOrmond <russell _-at-_ flora.ca>
To: General Copyright Discussions <discuss (at) digital-copyright.ca>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:59:45 -0500 (EST)

  This may be interesting for iCommons Canada to look at
<http://www.cippic.ca/icommons-canada>, or for Fergal in his international
copyright essay.  There is a very lengthy discussion in the
license-discuss@opensource.org about the public domain and whether a
dedications to the public domain in one country (such as the legislation
in the USA that releases government created works to the public domain)
applies to other countries.

List archives are at (among others):

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
http://news.gmane.org/group/gmane.comp.licenses.open-source.general/

Note: I don't understand the logic that suggests that if you dedicate
something to the public domain in one country that somehow it is still
under copyright in some other country.

  I do think it would be a positive step if Canada no longer had crown
copyright, but that is another story.  Different governments seems to have
a different way of looking at copyright when it comes to government
created works, and in this case the USA is more progressive than Canada.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Perspective of a digital copyright reformer on Sheila Copps, MP.
 http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/copps-ndp.html
 Discuss at: http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2757

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:26:11 -0700 (MST)
From: Alex Rousskov
To: OSI license discussion <license-discuss@opensource.org>
Subject: making public domain dedication safer


I use Creative Commons public domain dedication[1] for some of the
software I author. I am concerned that some people believe that it is
impossible to permanently and/or reliably place software in public
domain in some countries. It appears that while Creative Commons
public domain dedication makes authors intent clear, some laws may
not "support" that intent.

While I would love to hear that the above concerns are groundless, I
suspect we will never know for sure. Thus, I would like to create a
"safer" version of Creative Commons public domain dedication by
augmenting the public domain dedication with a catch-all license:

	The Authors place this Software is in Public Domain.
	<Creative Commons public domain dedication follows>

	If the above Public Domain dedication is deemed invalid
	under any theory of law, current or future, this Software
	can be dealt with under any OSI-approved license, including,
	without limitation, BSD and MIT licenses.

The above is unpolished because I am not sure it makes sense from a
legal point of view. After all, the above combination contains
contradictory assumptions (public domain versus copyrighted/licensed
code). Specifically,

  - Can PD+license combination be legal?
  - Can a reference to "any OSI-approved license" be legal?
  - Is the above approach likely to make PD dedications safer?
  - Can such a beast be polished and eventually approved by OSI?

Thanks,

Alex.

P.S. The reasons I would prefer _not_ to always use MIT/BSD license
     alone (without PD dedication) are moral/political and, hence,
     are beyond the scope of this mailing list.

[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
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