The Creative Commons project provides licenses designed to facilitate dedications to the public domain.[1] One such license, the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, states the author’s intent to “dedicate[ ] whatever copyright the [author] holds . . . to the public domain,”[2] with the express recognition that this will permit “anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial” freely to “reproduce[ ], distribute[ ], transmit[ ], use[ ], modif[y], buil[d] upon, or otherwise exploit” the work “including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.” [3] Finally, the license contains a number of terms aimed at assuring a permanent, irrevocable dedication:
Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at
large and to the detriment of the Dedicator’s heirs and successors. Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work. Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit or otherwise) those
copyrights in the Work.[4]
Although the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication has attracted some interest from makers of expressive works,[5] the Dedication may be legally problematic.[6] Nothing in the Copyright Act contemplates a voluntary extinguishment of the rights vested by the statute in the creator of a work,[7] and the courts have been highly reluctant to find copyright abandonment.[8]
Moreover, attempting to cut off the rights of heirs may present a
- ↑ See Dusollier, supra note 8, at 1408; Corey Field, Copyright, Technology, and Time: Perspectives on “Interactive” as a Term of Art in Copyright Law, 50 J. Copyright Soc’y U.S.A. 49, 67 (2003); Goss, supra note 99, at 980; Rothman, supra note 127, at 1929 n.109.
- ↑ Creative Commons, Copyright-Only Dedication (Based on United States Law) or Public Domain Certification, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ (last visited Apr. 2, 2010).
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ See, e.g., Michael W. Carroll, Creative Commons and the New Intermediaries, 2006 Mich. St. L. Rev. 45, 55–56 (2006) (discussing the Open Clip Art Library).
- ↑ See Diane L. Zimmerman, Living Without Copyright in a Digital World, 70 Alb. L. Rev. 1375, 1381 (2007) (“Creative Commons also purports to offer a license that allows creators to inject what they have produced into the public domain, or at least allows them to try.”). But cf. Matthew Dean Stratton, Will Lessig Succeed in Challenging the CTEA, Post-Eldred?, 53 J. Copyright Soc’y U.S.A. 481, 522 (2006) (seemingly assuming that the Public Domain Dedication is valid).
- ↑ See supra notes 177–81 and accompanying text; Zimmerman, supra note 217, at 1381 n.29 (observing that, “[a]lthough the statute has provisions that allow authors or their successors, under some circumstances, to terminate copyright grants, no where [sic] does it provide a mechanism by which an author or successor to an author can disclaim copyright altogether.” (citations omitted)).
- ↑ See supra notes 187–89 and accompanying text.
