Thanks. As a non-lawyer, CC0_FAQ seems adequate to me to databases, but plazi.org addresses a different kind of material, namely "facts" extracted from copyrighted material. For these, plazi's position is that no kind copyright accrues, nor are they data in the sense of being held in a database in their original expression, perhaps except incidentally. So for databases, CC0 sounds comforting for US held (originated?) databases, but not for, e.g. taxonomic descriptions excerpted from taxonomic publications.

There is perhaps a separate, but related, issue, about whether a character matrix can be deemed data not facts merely because its original expression is in a database. The legal theory under which plazi asserts that published taxonomic descriptions are not creative works rests, in part, on the fact that they are not original creative expressions because their expression is constrained by various codes of nomenclature. I've seen many a character matrix that seemed very creative indeed. :-)

This is really getting away from the purpose of TAG. I wonder where it should be moved, if TDWG is interested at all...

Bob

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Jonathan Rees jar@creativecommons.org wrote:

Good question. Thinh will give a more authoritative answer, but my answer is that CC0 is not a license - it's a waiver. Or rather, it's primarily a waiver, and only acts as a license when it has to, to cover situations where rights cannot be waived. If the material is not protected by copyright in your jurisdiction then you would use CC0 to reassure potential consumers, as well as to license it in jurisdictions where a waiver would not have legal standing.

More information here: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ

Best Jonathan

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Bob Morris morris.bob@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi Jonathan (Nice to meet you at tdwg!)

I just posted to Thinh's blog entry this comment:

'Where talking about “facts, ideas, and concepts that are not copyrightable by themselves.” this blog entry seems to contradict the CC0 commentary about http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero which I understand to mean that, like all CC licenses, CC0 can only apply to copyrightable material. How is this reconciled with advocacy of application of CC0 to something that is not copyrightable?'

Bob Morris

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Jonathan Rees jar@creativecommons.org wrote:

...

Sorry for the spam, but the subjects of data copyright, data licensing, and public domain came up repeatedly in conversations I had at the TDWG conference. I know this isn't really a technical issue, but tdwg-tag is the only TDWG list I'm on (so far). I'm hoping some of you will circulate the following pointer to your colleagues working on data policy. The article explains some of the issues around copyright and licensing as they pertain to data and gives the current Creative Commons position.

"Remembering Babel: Open Data Sharing & Integration" post by Thinh Nguyen, Science Commons http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/11/19/remembering-babel-open-...

Best Jonathan _______________________________________________ tdwg-tag mailing list tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag

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