Tom W. Bell

Uncopyright Notice: (¢)

For better or (more likely) worse, copyright now automatically encumbers every new fixed work of authorship. Copyright kicks in as soon as anyone writes an essay, doodles a sketch, or bangs out an email. A copyright’s holder need not register the work or put notices on copies of it to qualify for copyright protection.

If you want to play it safe, you should thus probably assume that some sort of copyright claim binds every fixed work. Even very old works often come with modern copyright strings attached. Consider, for instance, John Stuart Mill’s classic work, On Liberty. Though the book originally issued in 1859, and has long since fallen into the public domain, my library’s copy includes a notice reading, “Copyright 1978 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.” Presumably, that copyright covers only the editor’s introduction and selected bibliography. Yet Hackett’s overbroad notice doubtless discourages some people—especially those who know little about copyright law—from reproducing even the free parts of On Liberty.

In that and other ways, copyright policy currently fails to admit to its limitations. Cautiously presuming that copyright covers every fixed work, and duped by inflated copyright notices, we fail to fully enjoy our rights to the public domain. We should aspire to a more open copyright system, one that encourages both the creation of new works and the liberation of extant ones. For that, we need a way to signal, clearly and reliably, when a work has escaped the bounds of copyright. We need, in other works, an uncopyright notice.


The Copyright Act provides that copyright holders can brand their works with “Copyright,” or “Copr.,” in lieu of the copyright symbol, “©.” An uncopyright notice would naturally read “Uncopyright” or “Uncopr.” The uncopyright symbol? A “©” overlaid with a backslash, per the international iconography of things forbidden. In cases where such graphics prove too troublesome, the cents character in parentheses—”(¢)”—would do nicely.

Where will uncopyrighted works come from? Some will come from clearly unprotected parts of the public domain. The worthy Project Gutenberg, for instance, offers favorite old texts on the web, unencumbered with copyright protection, in an easily-accessed format. New works, too, might carry “(¢)” marks, put there by authors eager to help build the public domain.

[NB: The above text comes from part of my draft book, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good. Specifically, it comes from a portion of the draft of Part III, Chapter 7: Uncopyright and Open Copyright. You can find a complete draft of the full chapter, together with footnotes, here [PDF]. I welcome your comments.]

[Crossposted to Intellectual Privilege and Agoraphilia..]

November 14, 2007 | Comments |

Viewing 4 Comments

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    Great post. You may also be interest in CopyFraud by Jason Mazzone. He writes: "Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of
    Shakespeare’s plays, Beethoven’s piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet’s
    Water Lilies, and even the U.S. Constitution. Archives claim blanket copyright in
    everything in their collections. Vendors of microfilmed versions of historical newspapers
    assert copyright ownership. These false copyright claims, which are often
    accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the “owner’s”
    permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that
    are free for everyone to use."
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    Good source! Thanks, Steve R.
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    Doesn't your suggestion simply describe a subset of offerings from groups such as Creative Commons? Or are you suggesting that placing the (¢) be imposed by law for works in the public domain? If not and while I appreciate the need for something simpler than the creative commons marks (although the text cc-by-sa can also be used, which isn't that difficult to type especially considering the placement of ¢), I would think that most of the effort lays in getting creators aware of copyright, copyright law and the benefits of giving up certain rights for certain rights at certain points in your career.
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    Charles: I support Creative Commons, both morally and financially. But it aims for the most part at using copyright law in certain ways. Only as something of an aside does it mention the option of putting a work in the public domain, and it does not make it especially easy to so mark a work. I wouldn't want to require (¢) marking, but I do think we should adopt and use it when appropriate. CC does good work, but I think we need to promote uncopyrighting as well as creative copyrighting.

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