X-Cop Fly Company

Text content on xcopfly.com, with exceptions listed here, is dedicated to the public domain

by xcopfly - May 18th, 2010, 5:35:54 AM.

Some commenters have been asking whether or not the site can be quoted or reproduced.

I have been putting off deciding this – I will not use the popular Creative Commons licenses because later versions include a sneak GPL-style provision allowing relicensing under “compatible licenses” approved by Creative Commons (the organization) as “in the spirit” of existing Creative Commons licenses. The hard-to-find page of “compatible licenses” states that no additional licenses have been approved yet. But the GPLv2, created in 1991, featured an automatic upgrade to later versions, unless one was smart enough to take it out of the template. Many thought this was not a problem, as the GPLv2 came out in 1991, and just used the standard template. Version 3 of the GPL came out in 2006, and was very favorable to special interests.

In keeping with my attitudes towards modern copyright law, privacy rights, freedom of speech and censorship, I have decided to (mostly) stop being hypocritical and release portions of xcopfly.com into the public domain, with other portions subject to copyright.

UPDATE: Apparently Creative Commons’ “CC0 1.0 Universal” allows waiving additional rights (and responsibilities) in addition to copyright, which is what I had intended, and there are no special backdoors specific to Creative Commons Inc.’s management decisions (at least if the version number is stated). As of October 16, 2010, the use of “public domain” in the terms below has been changed to reflect this.

Here are the details:

1. All publicly-accessible text content originating from xcopfly.com (with the exceptions listed below) is dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
2. Unless explicitly stated, this excludes software, audio, video, images, graphics, comments, ZIP files and their contents, the shoutbox and its contents, all material found on the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site, and any content copyrighted by others.
3. Certain non-text content originating from xcopfly.com may, but only if explicitly stated, be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
4. Any thumbnail images, which have been created for images which the X-Cop Fly has explicitly stated are dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, are also dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. This does not apply to copyrighted images.
5. Certain content not originating from xcopfly.com may already be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
6. All additional waivers found in the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication apply to material released into the public domain by the X-Cop Fly Company prior to October 16, 2010. If waiving the copyright to any of this material was not possible in your jurisdiction at the time, the whole of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication applies to such material.
7. The statements given in this list of inclusions and exclusions also apply to xcopfly.com Web feeds and their contents, and no additional restrictions apply to syndication or other use of these feeds.
8. This list of inclusions and exclusions, including the portion below under the heading “HISTORY”, is copyrighted by the X-Cop Fly Company. The X-Cop Fly Company grants you the right to reproduce this list in verbatim form only. According to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, reproduction of this list is not a requirement for any use of material dedicated to the public domain.

HISTORY:

11/23/2011: Added note regarding Web feeds as #7, shifting pre-existing #7 to #8.

9/19/2011: Added note regarding thumbnail images as #4, shifting pre-existing #4, #5, and #6 down to #5, #6, and #7. For clarity, in #2, “all contents found on the Rogue…” changed to “all material found on the Rogue…”

9/18/2011: Added the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site to the list of exclusions.

8/9/2011: To avoid confusion, “downloadable content” in #2 was renamed to “ZIP files and their contents”. To make #2 easier to read, this phrase’s position moved in the list from before “software” to before “the shoutbox and its contents”.

7/2/2011: To avoid confusion, removed “now” from #5.

12/12/2010: Replaced “CC0 1.0″ with “CC0 1.0 Universal” for clarity. No other edition of “CC0 1.0″ exists as of this date, and all links on this Web site referring to “CC0 1.0″ instead of “CC0 1.0 Universal” went to the same “CC0 1.0 Universal” page.

11/14/2010: #5 Grammar fix: “any or all of” changed to “any of”. #6 clarified to state that this “HISTORY” section is part of the copyrighted list and asserts the CC0 1.0 status of the work with regard to reproducing the list.

10/16/2010: CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication replaces “in the public domain” in #1. “or subject to CC0″ added to #3 and #4. #5 moved down to #6, and new #5 deals with material which had been previously released into the public domain prior to the X-Cop Fly Company utilizing CC0 1.0.

(the date the shoutbox was added, sometime after 7/19/2010) Added “the shoutbox and its contents” to the list of exclusions.

(unknown date after 5/18/2010) Added “software” to the list of exclusions. All software on the site had been “downloadable content”, but clarity was needed, for example, with Web-based games, if any would be developed and/or hosted in the future.

Creative Commons License
The Text content on xcopfly.com, with exceptions listed here, is dedicated to the public domain by X-Cop Fly Company, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at xcopfly.com.






2 Responses to Text content on xcopfly.com, with exceptions listed here, is dedicated to the public domain

  1. [...] 9th Amendment: Rights Not Limited to Constitution: As rights such as copyright protection have been broadly expanded in length and scope, bloggers have been making use of Creative Commons licenses to waive such rights for the benefit of themselves and others. This even includes musicians who rely on a cult following and touring, such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who have left major labels and still kept their fans. Some have gone even further and released material entirely into the public domain, as controversial creationist figure Kent Hovind once did. I myself have released much of this blog’s content into the public domain. [...]

  2. [...] On May 18th, 2010, 5:35:54 AM EDT, I took a brave, countercultural, and definitely unusual stance on… With my other option being special-interest-controlled legal traps like Creative Commons, I released most of this blog’s text content into the public domain! And I’m not talking about the Creative Commons “CC0″ and “Public Domain Dedication” waiver trickery. [...]

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