16 ms·

A question for the lawyers among us: is there any effective difference between granting all these permissions vs actually putting them into public domain? Tom

by k_sze 6y ago

A question for the lawyers among us: is there any effective difference between granting all these permissions vs actually putting them into public domain? Tom says “In other words, all the lyrics herein should be treated as though they were in the public domain”, emphasis mine. That’s what got me curious. Does Tom effectively still hold some rights that are not afforded by “true” public domain?

andreareina 6y ago
Some countries don't recognize dedication to the public domain. I believe CC0 is the usual license for those that want to do this in a more robust way: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...
athms 6y ago
>Does Tom effectively still hold some rights In the United States, copyright is automatic and exists until expired. Nothing in the federal statute allows an entity to terminate copyright, effectively putting works in the public domain. The United States also allows authors (and heirs), except work-for-hires, to clawback copyright transfers and terminate licenses after 35 years. This is an inalienable statutory right, which means it cannot be waived even with a contract.
- cogburnd02 6y ago
  Citation needed.
  - athms 6y ago
    https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf
    - cogburnd02 6y ago
      That is not a citation. A citation provides enough specific information to independently verify that a claim comes from some authority. A citation would include (at the very least) some kind of statute or clause number.
      - zerocrates 6y ago
        The ability to terminate transfers and licenses is covered by 17 USC 203 (plus some other sections with different timetables and rules for transfers/licenses that occurred before 1978). There's an interesting and formally unresolved (because the applicable window for the earliest "copyleft" works hasn't yet arrived, for one thing) question about how this interacts with things like CC0, GPL, and more informal licenses to the public at large. The law requires the termination to fall into a specific 5-year window, with advance notice in writing (and it must be multiple years in advance), served specifically to the person whose rights are being terminated. The sheer logistics of trying to terminate a license granted to the world are therefore pretty difficult, but you could imagine termination targeting just a handful of lucrative targets. (Even then, when does a generally-available license "start"? When it's first offered? When the specific user first accesses the work? Is the timeframe "refreshed" every day the license is still on offer? This provision really wasn't written with these kinds of licenses in mind.)
        dllthomas 6y ago
        It would be amusing to formally terminate the rights of a few specific individuals to some piece of GPL code, as a sort of formal protest against whatever they're doing, requiring them to go and get the rights passed along to them again (... I assume that's how it'd work out?) from someone who still has license.
      - athms 6y ago
        You didn't specify which parts of my comment you wanted a citation, therefore I directed you to the entire code on copyrights. These are federal statutes. The document has chapters and is easily read.
    - caffeinewriter 6y ago
      Alright, since linking the entirety of title 17 isn't exactly easy to refer to as a source, the relevant part is 17 USC 203.^1 It's probably one of the more complex parts of copyright law. There's a few well-known cases of section 203 being used to claw back copyright decades down the line. (Note: I'm am very much not a lawyer) In 1938, John Steinbeck granted Viking Press rights to publish 13 of his works, including Of Mice And Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tortilla Flats, as long as they were kept in print and for sale. In 2005, John Steinbeck's son and granddaughter served notice to Penguin Publishing, who were the interested party at the time, that they were terminating the agreement.^2 This section was originally designed to give artists who may have essentially (or even literally) given away their rights due to inequitable bargaining power a chance to recoup their property down the line with at least several years notice that they are planning on terminating the agreement.^3 In practice, however, it's kind of a mess, and to say that it would allow an artist or their heirs to terminate a grant to the public domain is dubious. It's something that would likely see its way to the supreme court should it ever come to pass. I've included a couple other articles here just in the general interest of providing more info.^4^5 [1]: https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html [2]: http://billgablelaw.com/sites/law/files/TakingItBack.pdf http://billgablelaw.com/sites/law/files/TakingItBack.pdf [3]: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/terminators-mount-up-section-203-and-copyright-recovery-part-i/ https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/terminators-mount-up-section... [4]: https://media2.mofo.com/documents/190700-all-shook-up.pdf https://media2.mofo.com/documents/190700-all-shook-up.pdf [5]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law
jandrese 6y ago
The thing that gets me is when he goes "I don't have a family" because I guarantee that some long lost "relatives" will suddenly appear after he dies. Many copyrighted works are held by distant relatives hoping to cash in on them somehow, even decades after they've faded from public memory.
ajuc 6y ago
In some EU countries (for example Poland) copyright is separated into "personal" and "economic" rights. You can give up the economic rights and these are inherited and you can trade them. Personal rights cannot be traded or inherited and remain with the author till their death. So you cannot change the text without author's permission, you cannot lie about who wrote something, and author can prevent you from using his art for a different purpose (for example if you wrote a song and somebody used it as a military recruitment ad and you're a pacifist - that sort of thing).
- gspr 6y ago
  Interesting. Does this mean that a resident of Poland needs to explicitly give both personal and economic permissions when for example releasing free software? Can a Pole holding copyright over a GPLed piece of software mandate that it not be used by the military for example?
  - ajuc 6y ago
    That's the point you cannot give up personal copyrights even if you want to. It's supposed to prevent big companies forcing authors to sign deals bad for them when they have all the power. I'm not sure how this apply for software, I think it's less restrictive than for art (and it almost never comes up because Poland isn't a litigious country unlike US).
    - gspr 6y ago
      Hmm, so does that mean that a GPL'ed software project targetting the whole world and with a variety of international developers should reject contributions from Polish residents? Or, if we want to avoid software: what's the status of a Wikipedia contribution (CC-BY-SA-3.0) made by a Polish resident? Can I not safely assume that the content is CC-BY-SA-3.0? Must I assume that a Polish author can come after me if I follow the letter of CC-BY-SA-3.0, but not in a way that he or she likes?
      - ajuc 6y ago

by k_sze 6y ago

andreareina 6y ago

Some countries don't recognize dedication to the public domain. I believe CC0 is the usual license for those that want to do this in a more robust way: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...

athms 6y ago

>Does Tom effectively still hold some rights In the United States, copyright is automatic and exists until expired. Nothing in the federal statute allows an entity to terminate copyright, effectively putting works in the public domain. The United States also allows authors (and heirs), except work-for-hires, to clawback copyright transfers and terminate licenses after 35 years. This is an inalienable statutory right, which means it cannot be waived even with a contract.

cogburnd02 6y ago
Citation needed.
- athms 6y ago
  https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf
  - cogburnd02 6y ago
    That is not a citation. A citation provides enough specific information to independently verify that a claim comes from some authority. A citation would include (at the very least) some kind of statute or clause number.
    - zerocrates 6y ago
      The ability to terminate transfers and licenses is covered by 17 USC 203 (plus some other sections with different timetables and rules for transfers/licenses that occurred before 1978). There's an interesting and formally unresolved (because the applicable window for the earliest "copyleft" works hasn't yet arrived, for one thing) question about how this interacts with things like CC0, GPL, and more informal licenses to the public at large. The law requires the termination to fall into a specific 5-year window, with advance notice in writing (and it must be multiple years in advance), served specifically to the person whose rights are being terminated. The sheer logistics of trying to terminate a license granted to the world are therefore pretty difficult, but you could imagine termination targeting just a handful of lucrative targets. (Even then, when does a generally-available license "start"? When it's first offered? When the specific user first accesses the work? Is the timeframe "refreshed" every day the license is still on offer? This provision really wasn't written with these kinds of licenses in mind.)
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        It would be amusing to formally terminate the rights of a few specific individuals to some piece of GPL code, as a sort of formal protest against whatever they're doing, requiring them to go and get the rights passed along to them again (... I assume that's how it'd work out?) from someone who still has license.
    - athms 6y ago
      You didn't specify which parts of my comment you wanted a citation, therefore I directed you to the entire code on copyrights. These are federal statutes. The document has chapters and is easily read.
  - caffeinewriter 6y ago
    Alright, since linking the entirety of title 17 isn't exactly easy to refer to as a source, the relevant part is 17 USC 203.^1 It's probably one of the more complex parts of copyright law. There's a few well-known cases of section 203 being used to claw back copyright decades down the line. (Note: I'm am very much not a lawyer) In 1938, John Steinbeck granted Viking Press rights to publish 13 of his works, including Of Mice And Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tortilla Flats, as long as they were kept in print and for sale. In 2005, John Steinbeck's son and granddaughter served notice to Penguin Publishing, who were the interested party at the time, that they were terminating the agreement.^2 This section was originally designed to give artists who may have essentially (or even literally) given away their rights due to inequitable bargaining power a chance to recoup their property down the line with at least several years notice that they are planning on terminating the agreement.^3 In practice, however, it's kind of a mess, and to say that it would allow an artist or their heirs to terminate a grant to the public domain is dubious. It's something that would likely see its way to the supreme court should it ever come to pass. I've included a couple other articles here just in the general interest of providing more info.^4^5 [1]: https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html [2]: http://billgablelaw.com/sites/law/files/TakingItBack.pdf http://billgablelaw.com/sites/law/files/TakingItBack.pdf [3]: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/terminators-mount-up-section-203-and-copyright-recovery-part-i/ https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/terminators-mount-up-section... [4]: https://media2.mofo.com/documents/190700-all-shook-up.pdf https://media2.mofo.com/documents/190700-all-shook-up.pdf [5]: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law

jandrese 6y ago

The thing that gets me is when he goes "I don't have a family" because I guarantee that some long lost "relatives" will suddenly appear after he dies. Many copyrighted works are held by distant relatives hoping to cash in on them somehow, even decades after they've faded from public memory.

ajuc 6y ago

In some EU countries (for example Poland) copyright is separated into "personal" and "economic" rights. You can give up the economic rights and these are inherited and you can trade them. Personal rights cannot be traded or inherited and remain with the author till their death. So you cannot change the text without author's permission, you cannot lie about who wrote something, and author can prevent you from using his art for a different purpose (for example if you wrote a song and somebody used it as a military recruitment ad and you're a pacifist - that sort of thing).

gspr 6y ago
Interesting. Does this mean that a resident of Poland needs to explicitly give both personal and economic permissions when for example releasing free software? Can a Pole holding copyright over a GPLed piece of software mandate that it not be used by the military for example?
- ajuc 6y ago
  That's the point you cannot give up personal copyrights even if you want to. It's supposed to prevent big companies forcing authors to sign deals bad for them when they have all the power. I'm not sure how this apply for software, I think it's less restrictive than for art (and it almost never comes up because Poland isn't a litigious country unlike US).
  - gspr 6y ago
    Hmm, so does that mean that a GPL'ed software project targetting the whole world and with a variety of international developers should reject contributions from Polish residents? Or, if we want to avoid software: what's the status of a Wikipedia contribution (CC-BY-SA-3.0) made by a Polish resident? Can I not safely assume that the content is CC-BY-SA-3.0? Must I assume that a Polish author can come after me if I follow the letter of CC-BY-SA-3.0, but not in a way that he or she likes?
    - ajuc 6y ago