News

Access Copyright And Creative Commons Canada Launch Public Domain Registry

March 3, 2006

Exciting news today from Access Copyright and Creative Commons Canada as the two are joining forces to establish a public domain registry.  The registry should assist in identifying works in the public domain in Canada and will be further supported by the Wikimedia Foundation to allow individuals to contribute to the registry.  Regardless of your views of Access Copyright, I think they should be congratulated for moving forward with this terrific initiative which has the potential to serve as a critical resource for all Canadians and emerge as model for other countries.

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3 Comments

  1. WJM says:
    March 3, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    Whose rules?
    When and where will the analysis of what, exactly, constitutes “public domain” in Canada, be published?

  2. Darryl Moore says:
    March 3, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    I realize the way our current copyright act is written, that this is the only viable option, but….

    The way this should be done is with a registry of copyrighted works. Those works not in the registry would then be assumed to be PD.

    The way it is now you end up with all sorts of unearned royalties for unlocatable authors going to fat cat collective agencies who purport to represent the authors but (by definition) don’t.

    Well, I guess this is better than nothing as long as it isn’t those collectives that get to decide what works end up in this PD database…. Oh wait…

  3. steif says:
    March 4, 2006 at 11:51 am

    nice try AC
    IANAL, but this seems as bizarre as a registry of legally approved behaviour.

    I agree with the idea of a copyright registry. Automatic Copyright is looking more and more like a well-meaning idea gone astray.