Public domain donor

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2008/02/27 @ 7:20 am
Category Art & Design

Interesting take on the organ donor card…

Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation. By donating your IP into the public domain you will “promote the progress of science and useful arts” (U.S. Constitution). Ensure that your creativity will live on after you are gone, make a donation today.

Public domain donor – [via] Link.

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15 Responses to Public domain donor

Sean on February 27th, 2008 at 9:11 am said:

Might as well have scanned the front of the driver’s license. There is a web application that decodes those 2d barcodes now.

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Kevin N. Haw on February 27th, 2008 at 9:42 am said:

Not a bad idea to put in your will, but actually attaching it to your driver’s license is fraught with trouble. Sure, it’s clever in a “I’ll post it on Boingboing” way, but if you are an organ donor the last thing you want to do is confuse the ER people if you do bite it. Considering the trouble if they make the call to the organ bank and you didn’t really consent, they might just decide your organ donor card is a joke, too (remember: these people just tried to save your life and are up to their elbows in your blood – they probably aren’t amenable to ironic statements about intellectual property law at that moment). Presto: your organs go to waste instead of helping people.

Oh, yeah, if you carry this one out but you aren’t an organ donor, you really need to rethink your priorities. How about filling out this one?

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pt on February 27th, 2008 at 9:46 am said:

if paramedics and ER people get confused by something like this while you’re dying you have all sorts of other problems. that said – for some people, i’d say artists and many engineers, their IP might help people more than an organ – it all depends on what they work on, and it doesn’t need to be either/or – it can be both.

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beers on February 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am said:

this would start a new way of getting around patent protection, end a few key people’s existence. I think that is what the 70 yrs is for

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Jim on February 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am said:

Nah, please keep your crappy ideas like this one to yourself.

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Jim on February 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am said:

Nah, please keep your crappy ideas like this one to yourself.

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James on February 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am said:

What is with people jumping on the posters and even the linkees to “keep [their] crappy ideas… to [themselves]“? Welcome to the Internet; lots of people will have ideas you don’t like. What’s more, lots of the rest of us will like those ideas despite your dislike. At the very least different ideas provide food for thought.

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Robin Debreuil on February 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am said:

Welcome to the internet James : )

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James on February 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm said:

Hey, what’d I do?

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Bad spelller on February 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm said:

Hah, what retard would put their lisence’s barcode on the web..

Idiot.

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LM on February 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm said:

Wonderful idea! I’m putting a clause like that in my will, though, rather than on my driver’s license. I figure the organ-donor part is urgent; the copyright-donor part can wait until my will is read.

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Kevin N. Haw on February 27th, 2008 at 4:41 pm said:

for some people, i’d say artists and many engineers, their IP might help people more than an organ

There’s no reason why one can’t donate both.

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John on March 1st, 2008 at 12:20 am said:

But see, I don’t want people to have to wait until I die to know that all my IP is released into the public domain.

I wish there was some kind of document I could sign that said

“I irrevocably release all intellectual property rights to my past, present, and future works, effective immediately.”

That would be way better than the sticker.

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Anderw Macpherson on March 1st, 2008 at 6:42 am said:

@John – there’s nothing stopping you from releasing any of your copyrights to the public domain. A deed poll ought to do it, and any lawyer could draw one up for you. Creative Commons also include full public domain amongst their deeds, so that might be a place to start. I don’t think you could release all your future rights in this way, though, and I’d be cautious about doing that anyway.

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sam on December 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm said:

to those who say he is dumb for putting his bar code up, it is scrambled..

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