Sign of the Times: The Public Domain Symbol

I approve:

I’m borderline obsessed with things like Creative Commons (one of those whole “content isn’t created for the creator” type things). A little more explanation of the symbol, via ReadWriteWeb:

Creative Commons announced the release of the Public Domain Mark today, a tool that will help easily identify those works that are free of copyright restrictions. The mark – the letter C that’s associated with the symbol for copyright, but with a slash through it – is meant to make it clear that the material is free to reuse.

Works are part of the public domain when their copyright expires or when the artist designates the work as such. This means that people can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work – even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.

Awesome.