Copyleft Symbol

[Doug Ewell]

Asmus Freytag wrote:

> with the non-standard symbols like the copyleft, there's the desire to
> not encode stuff based on "passing activism". 

David Faulks wrote:

> The samples I have seem to be from people who want to make a statement
> via an anti-copyright message

The lengthy thread from 2000, and the shorter one from 2012, show that
the objections at those times fell into three main categories:

(1) Lack of (sufficient) evidence of use as an element of running text,
as opposed to a logo.

There's an interesting passage on the FSF page "What is Copyleft?" about
this symbol:

"It is a legal mistake to use a backwards C in a circle instead of a
copyright symbol. Copyleft is based legally on copyright, so the work
should have a copyright notice. A copyright notice requires either the
copyright symbol (a C in a circle) or the word 'Copyright'. [ ... ] A
backwards C in a circle has no special legal significance, so it doesn't
make a copyright notice."

(2) Concern that the symbol was a passing fad. Christopher and Ken noted
that the fact we are talking about it again 15 years later probably
answers that concern.

(3) The social-statement aspect.

António wrote in 2012, referring to the copyleft symbol plus the others
he just cited (e.g. Creative Commons): "I am convinced that they were
not accepted for encoding (if they were ever even formally proposed) due
purely to ideological reasons." However, I checked the UTC document
register going back to 2000 and could not find a proposal with the word
"copyleft" in its title, so perhaps these have not been proposed after
all.

The recent acceptance by UTC of BITCOIN SIGN, which is also often
perceived as a logo and also sometimes associated with a social
movement, might indicate greater willingness of UTC to encode the
copyleft symbol, even discounting the effects of the Emoji Revolution.

But as always, at least for non-emoji characters, a formal proposal is
probably mandatory.

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ����