Creative Commons “Zero” License

The Creative Commons 0 (thats a zero) license is the most permissive of all of the copyright offerings that the CC foundation offers, essentially providing a way for creators to donate their work to public domain in a way that incorporates elements of international law so that it will be recognized globally. The spirit of the project is to allow creators to foster new projects based on old and inactive works by donating them to the internet sandbox.

I thought I would take a few excerpts from the FAQ section of CC website and share them with you all, bolding the elements I found to be significant:

Who can use CC0?

Anyone who owns copyright and neighboring and related rights (such as database rights) in a work can use CC0 to give up those rights. But please be careful. CC0 is a one-way street. Once you apply CC0 to your work you can’t change your mind later and re-assert copyright or database rights over the work. In some cases, it’s hard to decide if something qualifies for copyright protection (for example, a database of mostly factual data). Even then, CC0 is a useful way to assure others that you have committed to waiving any possible copyright protection you may have.

Even though are you not making any warranties of copyright ownership under CC0, keep in mind that you are still responsible to any third parties who may have existing rights in your work when you distribute the work. For example, if your work contains another person’s work made available under CC-BY, you will need to identify that work separately and provide the license. Likewise, for any other license(s), you will need to ensure that you are in compliance. Of course, if you do not have permission to distribute a work belonging to someone else, you will need to seek appropriate permission from the copyright holder before you use CC0.

Does CC0 require others who use my work to give me attribution?

No, and that’s a big difference between CC0 and our licenses. Unlike our licenses, there are no conditions contained in CC0. Just like anything in the public domain, it will be possible for others to use or adapt it however they wish, even without attribution. However, this does not mean that you cannot request attribution in accordance with community or professional norms and standards.

Does CC0 really eliminate all copyright and related rights, everywhere?

CC0 doesn’t affect two very important categories of copyright and related rights. First, just like our licenses, CC0 does not affect other persons’s rights in the work or in how it is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. Second, the laws of some jurisdictions don’t allow authors and copyright owners to waive all of their own rights, such as moral rights. When the waiver doesn’t work for any reason CC0 acts as a free public license replicating much of intended effect of the waiver, although sometimes even licensing those rights isn’t effective. It varies jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

The above are only a snapshot of what I feel are the key points concerning the general use and the limitations of the license, and the full text of frequently asked questions can be found here. The gist seems to be that, while the CC0 designation attempts to provide the most complete avenue for donating a piece of your work to public domain, no amount of legalese can make that attribution bullet proof. CC0 seems to be best applied to completely original works, as opposed to databases, which may or may not contain facts that are under the control of the database’s creator. 

As a tool for self-promotion and brand extension, I could see how CC0 would be very useful, but only if you fall into one of the following categories:

1. You truly believe in the spirit of creative cooperation
2. You would love to court the possibility of potential publicity that could result from an open-source project containing your old/unused work generating buzz
3. You are the type who likes everyone to know about the charitable works you do

Any of the above motivations could potentially pay dividends. Just look at Cory Doctorow or Jonathon Coulton. 

For those of you who might be interested in exploring the CC0 license as a potential outlet for collaboration, Creative Commons has a web-based tool here that will allow you to explore the potential for one of your works to be classified under this designation. 

Tangentially, Creative Commons held their inaugural Technology Summit last year out at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA (for guys so committed to sharing everything with the world, technorati really seem to be no better than members of an exclusive country club at times). The full session is linked below in four parts. Its a long one, but it is an interesting view into the minds and motivations behind the CC foundation:

I would love to know what you all think of the idea of donating old work to public domain for the purposes of generating something new from the cloud, both in terms of its potential for brand expansion and its potentially harmful aspects. Hit us up via the comments and on the Twitter and check out the Facebook Group for our list of Top 5 Open-Sourced works.