If I am uploading historical photographs that are in the public domain, I should absolutely have an easy way to mark them as such. Not everyone uses Flickr like Instagram to share the last neat thing they saw on the street.

Don't forget to put them in the Internet Archive!

OK, I overlooked this use-case.

Yeah I think you may be focusing on the "creative art" aspect of this and less on other use cases. My mom is a retired photographer and she loves seeing other people use or repurpose (and yes even sell) some of the pictures she takes. In public libraries we want a way to share images the widest way possible and don't always have our own space to do that.

I get that you're concerned that people don't understand the public domain, but I think the response to that is more (and better) explanations about what it is and why it's important, not disallowing people access to tools that they want on a platform they use.

Which is a case where she should use CC0 and not the public domain marking.

dublinben, do you have any public domain photos of nuclear bomb test explosions?

The CC0 has, iirc, a 'rescue' clause in it that specifies the license's intent to retain the least amount of rights possible.

A much larger problem with any free license is that it's usually impossible to check a work's complete provenance. I. e. whoever attached the license might not actually be the creator.

Your concern is why CC released CC0.

They don't seem to be ambivalent about people using it.

CC0 = good. PD = bad.

PD, particularly for visual works, is something people often think is the case, but really isn't. It's not possible in a number of countries to give up copyright. In others, even when you can, you have moral rights.

If you are using PD for visual works, you might as well just tell people they can't use it.

> It's not possible in a number of countries to give up copyright

So, what status does IP have when its copyright expires?

It varies pretty wildly. In plenty it can become public domain this way, but that takes roughly forever.

In particular, something taken during our lifetime will almost certainly not become public domain until well after we are dead.

Public Domain, ist's just not possible to let go off Rhodes rights earlier.

Actually I have no problem with CC0, as matt4077 explained in a sibling comment, it seems pretty solid. I'm just concerned that people who aren't that interested in licensing but want to make their work as available as possible will choose the public domain option (intended for photos whose copyrights have expired) over the CC0 option.

Or, presumably, which were never copyrighted as in the case of "A United States government work is prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties." http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml

It's probably also worth noting in this discussion that (as per the referenced link) subjects in the photos may have privacy or publicity rights for photos used for commercial (non-editorial) purposes.

Contractors that prepare works for the US government can own copyright, and since most of the work for the government is now contracting, this doesn't buy a ton.

Sure. I was trying to point out why people might take issue with your comment. CC0 appears in the headline and URL, and one of the early paragraphs of the link says this:

But we’ve heard from our community that we’re missing two important designations: Public Domain and Creative Commons 0 (CC0). Many members of our community want to be able to upload images that are no longer protected by copyright and correctly tag them as being in the Public Domain, or they want to release their copyright entirely under CC0.

So it was odd for you to not mention CC0 at all in your comment.

(I've edited the last paragraph in an attempt to be less abrasive)

Being able to put in things in PD depends on your jurisdiction. In some countries, the original author has certain rights or responsibilities that can't be signed away. But in the USA it's pretty uncontroversial (as far as I know).