[PGCanada] Licensing for PG-Canada content

Andrew Sly sly at victoria.tc.ca
Thu Jan 27 23:05:14 PST 2005



On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Darryl Moore wrote:

> >
> I'll open this discussion by suggesting a cc|ca licence option (1)
> attribution
>
> http://creativecommons.ca/index.php?p=explained
>
> I.E. anyone can do anything they want so long as they attribute PGC as
> the source.
>


I know that some people have expressed their concern over the PG
license. However, I don't believe it should be discarded out of
hand.

A key point is that it does _not_ claim any copyright on the
text itself and only restricts what can be done with the text
as long as it is done along with the Project Gutenberg trademark.
This helps to end the self-perpetuating new claims of copyright
on old material that is so prevalent.

I have a problem with releasing PG Canada e-books under an
Attribution license that says we can:
   let others copy, distribute, display, and perform
   [our] copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it -
   but only if they give [us] credit.

If we own the copyright to an item, we are entitled
to say that; but as long it truly is public domain material,
we don't have a right to impose such restrictions on it.
We could _request_ to be acknowledged as a source, but I don't
see that we could require it.

Andrew



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