Re: Copyleft Symbol

[Asmus Freytag (t)]

On 2/15/2016 5:08 PM, Robert Wheelock wrote: Hi! Shouldn’t the COPYLEFT SIGN be a small circled L?! It’s something to think about... In this thread, we are not discussing the best design for a new symbol for this concept, but whether to encode a symbol that is in actual use. The former would be a separate discussion, and I'm not sure whether Unicode is the correct venue - many people interested in marking their documents with symbols like these do not take part in the discussions here. A./ Thank You! On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Asmus Freytag (t) <asmus-...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: On 2/15/2016 9:32 AM, Doug Ewell wrote: 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. I take it that this has been addressed (modulo the usual difficulties about proving that for unencoded symbols). 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." Unicode has always recognized usage over official status. So this should not be an issue. (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. Very good point. (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. A proposal is needed, discussion on this list is useful only as far as a proposer wants to get some suggestions on how to proceed. 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. Delete "probably". A./ -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸