Copyleft

The concept of a “copyleft” was first introduced in the 1970s and is a form of copyright, a licensing of intellectual property, which sets out the terms of that property's use and distribution. Unlike copyright, which reserves all rights for the producer(s) of a piece of work, copyleft reserves some or no rights for the work's creator(s). Copyleft puts the work into the public realm, where, depending on the degree of freedom in the particular license used, the work can be changed, reproduced, used, or distributed. As opposed to the familiar copyright symbol ©, copyleft is signified by a backward “c” inside a circle (which, with splendid irony, is unavailable in standard Unicode). Although the official General Public License is offered only in English, there are 18 unofficial translations of the license, from Spanish to Farsi, with several more under way. Creative Commons, the nonprofit corporation that works to spread copyleft licensing, notes 52 countries that have adopted Creative Commons license legislation and 8 other countries with legislation pending.

Copyleft is often thought of in terms of software, though it can also apply to music, art, writing, and other forms of information. One of the first examples of copyleft in the software world was with Tiny BASIC, a simplified version of the BASIC programming language developed in 1975. In the credits for the software was a copyleft symbol with the phrase “ALL WRONGS RESERVED.”

The GNU General Public License (GPL), written by Richard Stallman in 1989, is a commonly used implementation of copyleft in the modern software world. Copyleft's strongest implications may indeed lie in the realm of software, as it allows for collaboration that would otherwise be impossible under copyrighted software. Some primary examples of software that have flourished under the GNU GPL are the many forms of Linux now freely available, the popular web browser Firefox, and the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, Open Office. By putting these programs under a copyleft agreement, their users are able to not only modify and improve the software but also create free alternatives to what may otherwise be expensive programs.

A guarantee that a subsequent work derived from copylefted information will remain free under the same terms is key to a strong copyleft agreement. This is to ensure that the information will never be taken and copyrighted for exclusive use, negating the original intentions. Copyleft agreements can come in varying degrees, depending on the terms of the agreement. Whereas the GNU GPL generally applies to software, another license, the GNU Free Documentation License, was written by the Free Software Foundation to copyleft accompanying manuals and documentation.

Creative Commons is a similar form of rights preservation to copyleft. The Creative Commons website describes the license as in between full copyright, wherein all rights are reserved, and the [Page 144]public domain, wherein no rights are reserved. Creative Commons works to create a license that protects a work's author from being exploited while trying to contribute to community and cooperative efforts. Licenses are available online.