Greetings.
On 12 Jan 2017, at 7:31, Matthias Liffers wrote:
> “The CC0 is a document in which the user purports to abandon all
> claim to copyright and related rights. It is not strictly a licence.
> Whilst you could apply a CC0 Waiver, there are some doubts about its
> force under Australian law, particularly with respect to moral rights.
> Furthermore, the disclaimer that accompanies CC0, at present, may be
> ineffective in protecting the user from liability for claims of
> negligence.”
>
> Of course, given that this is a UK mailing list, Australian law would
> probably not apply to the majority of subscribers!
To the extent that Australian law has an ancestral relationship with UK
(or possibly more specifically English) law, the underlying legal
principle might be the same.
It seems that English law doesn't really have the concept of 'public
domain' (other than in the different sense of 'public domain' meaning
'known to the public'), and hence it's probably legally impossible to
make something 'public domain', in the licence sense, under that system.
That's probably why '... to the extent allowed by law' is included in
the CC0 universal licence text, since it seems that, in English law, the
CC0 'licence' would be interpreted by a court, not as a licence, but
merely as a public declaration that you do not plan to sue someone for
using the materials. Of course, that could be taken to be morally
equivalent to a 'do what you like' licence, so this might come under the
heading of a quibble.
However it's presumably true that, as Matthias says, a lack of legal
force means that you couldn't disclaim liabilities, which might matter
more than jurisprudential technicalities.
Creative Commons seems to have pulled back from its 'porting' of
licences into national jurisdictions, or else it would be interesting to
see what an 'England and Wales' port of CC0 said.
But I'm not a lawyer, and only passing on advice I've read elsewhere.
I will, however, quote a lawyer on this (from another, non-archived,
list):
> How do you "waive" a property right? English law has never liked the
> idea
> of unowned property. As a rule of thumb, if it can be owned, someone
> owns
> it. They may not know they do and that someone might be the Crown, but
> nevertheless is belongs to someone.
>
> Sure, some things can't be owned at all (eg corpses). You could argue
> that
> animals in ferae naturae (i.e. wild) are "unowned" until caught, but a
> common lawyer might say actually they once you own them they aren't
> wild
> animals any more.
Of all the things that a corpse can be, a curiously unownable thing was
not one that had occurred to me.
Best wishes,
Norman
--
Norman Gray : https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
|