2

Jenny Everywhere is an "open source" character made before there were Creative Commons licenses. When including her in a work you are supposed to include the Jenny Everywhere Paragraph:

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

The spirit is clear, but is this a legal requirement? If so, can this notice coexist with:

lofidevops
  • 1,970
  • 10
  • 27
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of How is the BSD GPL-compatible? (because that question deals with whether a licence with a requirement to include a simple rights statement is compatible with GPL) – MadHatter Apr 08 '18 at 09:29
  • I've updated the question to note that issue as addressed, but the broader question (whether/how The Paragraph under other licenses in general) stands (and I believe is answered below) – lofidevops Apr 09 '18 at 07:37

1 Answers1

0

The Jenny Everywhere character concept was dedicated to the public domain (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), with the explicit intention that she can appear in any work under any license. Similarly to, say, Thor or Sherlock Holmes. (And unlike trademarked and copyright-restricted characters like Mickey Mouse or Superman.)

The Jenny Everywhere Paragraph is not a legal notice. "Longer works involving Jenny are encouraged to include this paragraph", one might even say strongly encouraged, but this is not a legal requirement.

If you make (for example) a copyright-restricted work featuring Jenny, you should include The Paragraph but you are not legally obliged to. If you include it, you retain your copyright and the character concept remains in the public domain. If you don't include it, you still retain your copyright and the character concept still remains in the public domain. But you don't get invited to parties.

If you are including or adapting other works (that Jenny happens to appear in), then you should always mention and abide by the license details of those other works, as normal.

If you want/need to formally recognise her inclusion the relevant fields would be:

Title: Jenny Everywhere
Author: Various authors
License: Public domain
Optional text: "The character of Jenny Everywhere is available..."

...formatted appropriately for your context.

Here is an example of an unchallenged appearance in a BY-SA work about six years after the first wave of "Jennymania". Note that The Paragraph does not appear:

Reality or bust!

Reality or bust! by Diana Nock. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 US.

Sources

lofidevops
  • 1,970
  • 10
  • 27
  • 3
    What's your source for saying it's released into the public domain? The actual terms of the requirement seem to pretty clearly contradict that. – curiousdannii Apr 08 '18 at 07:28
  • added a living source, archive.org references and an example of a BY-SA licensed work - in short, my anxiety around The Paragraph was misplaced (it is not a legal notice) – lofidevops Apr 09 '18 at 18:57
  • The references 1, 2 only refer to PD images, not the character. 3 links to 10 pages of forum discussion, without pointing out where exactly the character concept was dedicated into the PD. 4 is unclear, and a secondary source. 5 summarizes 3, but mentions an explicit license: “The character of The Shifter is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This incidia must be included in any publication involving The Shifter, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.” That doesn't look like a PD dedication but like an attribution requirement to me! – amon Apr 27 '18 at 21:22