I'm not sure if the writer of the LV text policy (edit: or the FAQ entry on Creative Commons) was aware of the CC0 license, and how it's designed to be exactly the same as putting a work in the public domain. I can see, though, why it might not be expedient for LibriVox to publish readings of CC0 works, and that's because it's not always the same as public domain.flavo5000 wrote: ↑January 15th, 2023, 6:32 amI don't know all the history of what has or has not been allowed on here, but it should all be tied to which Creative Commons license is granted. Often when an author declares their work to be in the public domain, they are invoking the non-commercial Creative Commons license which prevents users of the work from leveraging it for commercial purposes (selling it for instance). In this particular case, the Minecraft End Poem is granted in the CC0 1.0 Universal license which waives all rights to commercial use, effectively granting it the same status as if the work were 95 years old, meaning it is completely in the public domain with no strings attached.czandra wrote: ↑January 10th, 2023, 3:11 am Sounds like things are shifting. I understood that an author cannot give to public domain for LV purposes. Not definitive enough, author has to be 70 years dead or 95 years since published.
Small note: William Blake might be one of the most notoriously self-published authors, but there were many more who are now part of "the canon" who at least started that way and were not published "traditionally" by a publisher at arm's length until after death. Poets suffer this fate as an occupational hazard.
Cz
Also as far as whether this is a published work, I would say being the ending of one of the most successful video games of all time qualifies as being "published", maybe not in the traditional sense of having a physical book released but I would wager far more people have read this ending than 90% of the books that have been recorded on Librivox.
Also just FYI, I have zero interest in recording this myself, but I have gotten very interested in copyright law in recent months, so this sort of thing just fascinates me.
In some countries, you can renounce all rights to a work just by declaring it to be in the public domain. In others, you can publish it under CC0, granting all non-exclusive rights and agreeing not to exercise your own exclusive rights, just as if it were in the public domain.
But some countries give you exclusive rights that cannot be renounced or contractually bound. Not an issue if you never change your mind, but that makes CC0 relatively untested.
I'm speculating there are similar concerns with works that lack an ISBN, where laws and treaties that handle regular ISBN'd books are relatively better understood. I don't think the ISBN is used by LV in identifying a work, its copyright owner, or its copyright date, but I could be wrong. There could also be the question of what's worth including, but I think the policy is pretty clear that all works are worth including (once they're free of copyright), if someone wants to do them.
So if I'm understanding correctly, this isn't a case of it being illegal for LV to do this work, it's a matter of not wanting to open a brand new can of legal worms if we can avoid it. But it might be useful to expand the bit about self-publishing, and/or our FAQ entry about CC licenses. I see these becoming more common questions in future, as more works are self-published under not just CC-BY (I think the least restrictive of the "some rights reserved" CC licenses), but as CC0 or directly to the public domain.
But now it is stated more obviously.