Website Copyright and Licensing

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WorldBlender
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2012 12:34 am

Website Copyright and Licensing

Post by WorldBlender »

Problem:
The main page, forum posts, the recently announced community.reactos.org subdomain, and all other pages of node/* (the development subdomains and wiki (the content license for that area already has a license notice) are excluded from here) lack a copyright notice.

Why this could be bad:
Without a copyright notice placed, I and other like people may be unclear about whether the above content in question is open for reuse, and/or I will assume that an invisible "All Rights Reserved" is attached to that content.

A little background information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright wrote:...in most places (i.e., countries) [one does not] have to apply for a copyright – [he/she gets] one automatically every time [he/she produces] creative work. ... The absence of a copyright notice [for any creative work, online or offine] does not mean that a work may be freely used. If in doubt, assume you cannot use it [, therefore implying that that work is non-free].
I feel like that some people in the world may still not know about this, even though having their works with automatic copyright with "All Rights Reserved" may not fit for everyone. :(

Solution (aimed for the website maintainers):
Place a simple copyright notice on most, if not all, of , so that I and other like people will be relieved to see that that content is clearly not in the public domain. Better yet, if you intended on opening up that content, use the Creative Commons license chooser to apply a proper license (the licenses available are not the only open licenses in existance; feel free to find another one if they do not work for you). After all this happens, content licensing here should be more clear. If you decide to take a step further and use an open license, I commemorate you for doing so; you have enabled people to legally share actual copies of the above content in question, not just merely let them link to that content. ;)

P.S. This is not, in any way, a selfish motive done only by me. I am posting this in order to bring an issue to more people, so that they can fix this problem on their own times. In the uncommon case that someone does something with your content in a way that you may not like, that does not necessarily mean that more bad people will soon exploit that content.
License of this post:
CC0 1.0 Universal - means that I place this work into the public domain, although I may bring similar posts elsewhere.
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