[dahart]

CC0 is “a tool for relinquishing copyright and releasing material into the public domain”, and the official icon for it says “public domain” [1] mainly created because actual public domain is problematic across different countries, I believe. Actual public domain really is ‘copyright-free’, and it makes sense to describe CC0 as making things ‘copyright-free’ to a general audience that may not be familiar with the subtle intricacies of copyright law. It is true that only the original copyright holder has the authority to release their works into the public domain, but once they’ve done that, copyrights are no longer held, and the work is no longer subject to protection under copyright law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_...

https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/

[anticorporate]

Right... CC0 exists because there is no such thing as relinquishing copyright in many countries, including the United States. It's a license that allows the work to be used as if copyright were relinquished. If I create a work and license it under CC0, I still own the copyright, I've just given everyone a license to use the work in such a way that I cannot enforce most or all of the rights associated with my ownership of that copyright.

[dahart]

CC0 a license that relinquishes copyrights. You’re right that it’s a license and not public domain, but otherwise making a distinction without a difference. The stated explicit intent, and the rights granted by the license, are to provide a version of public domain that is unambiguous and works globally.

Your terminology is a bit funny when you say “I still own the copyright” or “all of these works are copyright”. Works aren’t copyright, works are protected by copyrights that authors have… unless the author waives those rights. The copyright one has by default is the exclusive right to copy and distribute the work. Once you give that away, either via license or public domain attribution, it’s irrevocable and permanent, and there’s nothing of value in the idea that you’re still the copyright holder, since there are no longer any copy rights retained nor copyright protection under any laws.

In short, it’s perfectly fine to call CC0 attributed works “copyright-free” because that’s what the license actually does, it “waives” all copyrights and “related rights”, and allows the public to copy at will, forever.

BTW I don’t think it’s true to say that there’s no such thing as relinquishing copy rights in many countries, that’s too strong of a claim. It is true to say there’s no such thing as public domain, but copy rights (or “related rights”) can be transferred and/or waived pretty much everywhere.

[kubanczyk]

"To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently, irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights [...]"

It being "to the greatest extent permitted by applicable law" I think you are imprecise here:

> there’s nothing of value in the idea that you’re still the copyright holder, since there are no longer any copy rights retained nor copyright protection under any laws

[starkrights]

And their point is that saying “copyright free” will probably be more immediately understandable to people who don’t know that and don’t want to read a small comment about copyright ‘intricacies’ (even if it’s not that intricate)

By saying copyright free, more people who need freely-licensed works like this are likely to use it instead of being warded off by “this does has a license, it’s copyrighted, but it’s actually free because of the license”

Colloquially, it’s the same thing.