The article does not explain how they entered it into the public domain. One cannot just declare something is public domain. Public domain is a special circumstance.
Depends on the jurisdiction—e.g. Germany[1] is known to be particularly problematic. But in this particular case, the model has been released under CC0[2], which has a fallback permissive license alongside its public domain dedication, specifically to avoid this problem. That’s why the CC0 is a thousand words long instead of a couple of sentences. Most sites hosting “public domain” works also use the CC0 or something similar.
Surrendering work to the public domain is actually more complicated. It's easy to make the claim that a work is public domain, but the law may not allow you to actually relinquish all copyright claims. This also depends on which country you are in.
>I'm actually very curious now what led you to the line of thinking that it isn't possible?
The public domain is the set of all works in which no copyright subsists. Copyright automatically subsists in a work from its creation until it expires. Copyright is a property right. All property must have an owner.
Therefore a work cannot enter the public domain unless the copyright subsisting in it has expired.
(This is from the perspective of the law of England and Wales, at least. Other jurisdictions have similar legal axioms that produce the same result, though)
bityard|1 year ago
Of course you can. Lots of people do this. There are whole websites that collect and distribute public domain photos, music, artwork, etc.
I'm actually very curious now what led you to the line of thinking that it isn't possible?
mananaysiempre|1 year ago
Depends on the jurisdiction—e.g. Germany[1] is known to be particularly problematic. But in this particular case, the model has been released under CC0[2], which has a fallback permissive license alongside its public domain dedication, specifically to avoid this problem. That’s why the CC0 is a thousand words long instead of a couple of sentences. Most sites hosting “public domain” works also use the CC0 or something similar.
[1] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/9871
[2] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode....
cpitman|1 year ago
This is why the CC0 license exists, to attempt to provide a more legally sound equivalent to plain public domain (https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/).
M2Ys4U|1 year ago
The public domain is the set of all works in which no copyright subsists. Copyright automatically subsists in a work from its creation until it expires. Copyright is a property right. All property must have an owner.
Therefore a work cannot enter the public domain unless the copyright subsisting in it has expired.
(This is from the perspective of the law of England and Wales, at least. Other jurisdictions have similar legal axioms that produce the same result, though)
dlgeek|1 year ago
kid64|1 year ago