What is the difference between public domain and open license?
It is important to understand the difference between public domain and open license (such as Creative Commons licenses). They both grant free access to the materials, but the scope and nature are completely different.
Open licensing does recognize a clear ownership of an intellectual property, whereas the intent of public domain is for the copyright holder to waive copyright ownership in the work. Therefore, users are required to attribute the work to the original authors when using openly licensed materials.
In a way, public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way (this sentence is from Public Domain, CC-BY).
Public Domain vs Open License
Please see the table below to see the difference between public domain and open license.
| Public Domain | Open License |
|---|---|
| Copyright ownership is waived. | Copyright ownership retained. |
| Author gives away rights to the public to reproduce and distribute creative work. | Author grants broad rights to the public to reproduce and distribute creative work. |
If you want more in-depth discussion about public domain, please read Public Domain by James Boyle. And you suspected right– this book is CC licensed (CC-BY-NC-SA), meaning that you can download the entire book for free.
Please also see the CC licensed comic created to simplify the concept and make it fun at http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/zoomcomic.html
Difference between Public Domain, Open License, and All Rights Reserved Copyright
Please see the table below to see the difference between open license, public domain and all rights reserved copyright.
| Public Domain | Open License | All Rights Reserved Copyright |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright ownership waived. | Copyright ownership retained. | Copyright ownership retained. |
| Author gives away rights to the public. | Author grants rights in advance. | Author does NOT grant rights to the public. |
| It is not mine. I give up my right as an author. You don’t even have to cite me although I would appreciate it. | It is mine but I do allow you to take my material. No need to ask for my permission to use it because it is already granted -just be sure to make proper attribution to me. | It is mine. I do NOT allow you to take this material and repurpose it. You definitely need to ask for my permission to use it. |
| Most open. | Most closed. |
The content in the table above is also available as an infographic.
