Re: CC0 and authors' names in Copyright field

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Gioele Barabucci <gioele@svario.it> writes:

> thanks for the suggestion. (BTW, is the fact that CC0 is a "licence"
> rather than a "dedication" an accepted POW? I thought it was still an
> open question.)

The conservative position, since the current copyright regime makes it
extremely difficult to divest a work of copyright, is to assume the work
remains under copyright restrictions even with the CC0 dedication.

Regardless, the DEP-5 standard treats CC0 as a “license”, so if you want
to conform to that standard, that's the place to put the information.

> Could the copyright-format page [1] be changed to state more
> explicitly that the Copyright field should list the names of the
> authors even in the case of public domain works (or works licensed via
> CC0)?

I don't see that follows from what we've discussed. The document states
explicitly that in the case of a public domain work you *don't* need to
list copyright holders::

    Fields
    […]

    Copyright
    […]

    If a work has no copyright holder (i.e., it is in the public
    domain), that information should be recorded here.

You should specify the license as CC0, you should give the text of the
CC0 grant (the text which says the recipient has the rights described by
CC0) in the License field body.

If you've got documentation that the work has no copyright holder,
that's the documentary information to put in the “Copyright” field.

-- 
 \       “… whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to |
  `\             his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.” —Robert G. |
_o__)           Ingersoll, _The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child_, 1877 |
Ben Finney