Most people have almost no clue what the terms "copyright," "Creative Commons," and "public domain" actually mean.

Creative Commons is basically a brand these days... don't get me started.

But do you?

I may not be an expert on the subject, but I know that CC is not necessarily the same as public domain, and copyright does not necessarily imply all the "bad" things you usually hear about copyright. People sometimes refer to open source software as public domain, however, the vast majority of it is not in the public domain, but is in fact copyrighted.

Fair enough.

I could go into more detail, but at this hour I'd probably just start rambling... I just wanted to mention a few points that people get wrong very often.

One could even go so far as to say that the open source development model would not work well without copyright, as copyright currently prevents companies from stealing code and releasing their own proprietary versions of open source products. (Or, in other words, if there was no software copyright all GPLed code would effectively become BSD code.)

Copyrights are pretty simple-- I believe most people know what it is-- when i was in law school i didnt find it to be hard to understand. CC on the other hand is less known-- there are many different types of cc-- very important to know for internet law. Public domain is used often as alegal term-- although i dont think most people know it-- they know thatafter a certain amount of years the time limits on all patents- copyright- trademarks etc enter public domain and are public ownership.

"they know thatafter a certain amount of years the time limits on all patents- copyright- trademarks etc enter public domain and are public ownership."

This hasn't been true since 1976. Thomas Macaulay has been spinning in his grave for thirty years.

D'A

1923 is the year whose copyrights will never expire, but the changes in US law that made this possible started in 1976.

D'A