conflict with the statute’s termination provisions, which expressly invalidate such commitments.[1]
Recognizing these difficulties,[2] Creative Commons launched a new project to aid licensing of works in which no copyright rights are retained. The result was a new model license known as “CC0” or “CC Zero.”[3] Like the Public Domain Dedication, the CC0 license expressly abandons the author’s copyright rights, but the CC0 license includes additional terms (in the form of a broad and unconditional license) designed to effectuate what is functionally a dedication to the public domain even if the abandonment of the author’s rights under copyright is determined to be legally ineffective.[4]
The CC0 license includes a brief “Statement of Purpose” explaining the licensor’s intent in adopting the license:
Certain owners wish to permanently relinquish those [copyright
and related] rights to a Work for the purpose of contributing to a commons of creative, cultural and scientific works (“Commons”) that the public can reliably and without fear of later claims of infringement build upon, modify, incorporate in other works, reuse and redistribute as freely as possible in any form whatsoever and for any purposes, including without limitation commercial purposes. These owners may contribute to the Commons to promote the ideal of a free culture and the further production of creative, cultural and scientific works, or to gain reputation or greater distribution for their Work in part through the use and efforts of
others.[5]
To implement that purpose, the CC0 license next provides for an express abandonment of the author’s copyright and related rights “[t]o the greatest extent permitted by … applicable law” “for the benefit of each member of the public at large and to the detriment of Affirmer’s heirs and
- ↑ See infra Part III.B.1.
- ↑ Creative Commons summarized the problems facing the existing Public Domain Dedication as follows:
Creative Commons, About CC0—“No Rights Reserved”, http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 (last visited Mar. 29, 2010).Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright term expires. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by copyright owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about contributing a work to the public domain.
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ See infra notes 225–26 and accompanying text.
- ↑ Creative Commons, Creative Commons Legal Code, pmbl. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode (last visited Mar. 29, 2010) [hereinafter CC0 1.0 Legal Code].
