Public Domain? There’s A Mark For That

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October 13, 2010 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

ReadWriteWeb reports that Creative Commons has announced the release of the Public Domain Mark, a tool that will help easily identify those works that are free of copyright restrictions.

The mark – the letter C that’s associated with the symbol for copyright, but with a slash through it – is meant to make it clear that the material is free to reuse.

Works are part of the public domain when their copyright expires or when the artist designates the work as such. This means that people can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work – even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.

The Public Domain Mark is a further step on the path towards making the promise of a digital public domain a reality,” said American University law professor Michael Carroll, a founding board member of Creative Commons. “Marking and tagging works with information about their copyright status is essential.

Computers must be able to parse the public domain status of works to communicate its usefulness to the public. The metadata standard underpinning the Public Domain Mark and all of CC’s licensing and legal tools are what makes this possible.”