I don’t argue that everything must be PD, nor that it’s a requirement that musicians waive copyright or license liberally.

Instead, I believe that CC 0, which is nothing more in the USA than a cool way to say “dedication into the public domain”, is a useful device for those who want to make a donation to other artists and other listeners. My feelings about BY and even BY NC are similar,though nuanced a bit differently.

To me, the key is that the artist/creator chooses to forego or not to forego rights. Many artists/creators choose to forego rights in pursuit of a kind of giant public library of creative material.

I’m not saying that all books must be free–I say that a huge public library of books (i.e., sounds, samples, music) is a positive good.

We don’t need to tear down all the ramparts of copyright to recognize a virtue in someone electing not to enforce a given one. Similarly,
we need not imagine that our choices to liberally license or publicly dedicate to the public domain are unprecedented new steps–people have been doing this with non-standard licenses for decades upon decades.

What is different is that digital technology has created a situation in which the ease of sharing creative material, and the obvious advantages of such sharing, are apparent to masses of people.

CC licenses and the CC 0 desingnation merely create a user-friendly standardization, available on an entirely optional basis, to those who wish to put a sensible legal structure to this sharing.

One need not go “whole hog” into “abolish all copyright” to go “whole hog” for CC 0. I suggest instead that CC 0 can be an aid to people who want to create “all rights reserved” copyrighted works, as well as to people who want to create liberally licensed works.

Giving people the option to forego a statutory right in pursuit of a greater good is a very different thing than insisting that all copyright “must be” abolished. To my mind, this is not inconsistent with copyright nor inconsistent with people trying to earn money from music. It’s a different “free” regime, to subserve any of dozens of purposes, all of them amazingly good.

Obviously, some individuals and cultures find ways to incorporate works in a very present way – like Hendrix covering “Sgt. Pepper’s . . .” 2 nights after the album came out is a different standard of time than us waiting another 100 years or whatever for that song to be free to remix.

But, I think the real effect of each of the CC licenses won’t be so obvious for another 10-20 years, when there is another generation that has maybe grown up more free to remix / reuse the present and very recent past.

On that note, I’d like a license like CC-BY-SA that automatically turns to something like a CC0 after 4 (or 7) years. I think the original limited duration – aspect of copyright was one of its smartest features, in terms of being non-destructive to the arts.

Unfortunately, CC cannot bring themselves to describe this as the divestiture of privilege to restore others’ rights. They are fundamentally a pro-copyright organisation and use the corrupt language that conflates privilege (copyright) with right (natural right), and have mottos such as “not all rights reserved”. CC treats all controls (rights and privileges) as if cut from the same cloth and simply provides mechanisms for modulating them, it won’t make any value judgement (unlike the FSF). That’s where the confusion is generated. And so I cringe when I see people then start complaining about moral rights and how difficult it is to get rid of them.

Privileges are unnatural and suspend the natural liberty of others to share and build upon human culture (created to give printers a monopoly in the 18th century).

Rights are natural, deriving from individuals’ natural powers and needs, and supposed to be protected by a government created for such a purpose.

My opinions are based on the limited CC world that I have seen with my own eyes. And my indifference to CC0 is based solely on my limited scope.

I do however find it slightly hypocritical that on one hand old model record labels are condemned for taking away musicians rights but on the other forgoing their rights completely for the good of the Commons is admirable. To me, it seems to sends out a conflicting and confusing message. Especially when trying to explain to those who are not yet familiar with CC.