[cc-community] URL attribution requirements

Rob Myers robmyers at mac.com
Thu Jul 8 08:56:38 EDT 2004


On Thursday, July 08, 2004, at 01:19PM, Greg London <email at greglondon.com> wrote:

>what if one link points to both the full license text and the copyright notice?

IANAL but no. You must display the URL to the license. It says a link to the license, not a link to a derivative work of the license, or a page that just so happens to have the license somewhere on it, or a page that links to the license, or etc. .

>If I take the full text of the license from here
>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode
>and paste it here  http://www.greglondon.com/nc
>and then add the title of the work and copyright notice for the work,
>wouldn't I satisfy both requirements with one url?

No. Even if it didn't break the license it is a fantastically bad idea. At some point before your copyright expires the link will break and the work will become orphaned. The CC server is a much better bet. That or just physically including the license as the FSF recommend and the license allows.

>When it says "must include a URL for this license", does "this" mean >this< URL
>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode
>Or does "this license" simply mean a copy of the full license text will suffice?

It says *THE* url, not *A* url. So it has to be the CC server URL. Or alternatively the license allows you to have a physical copy of the license included with the work. And no, I don't think "on the same server at the end of a hyperlink" does this. :-)

>A quick perusal of CC did not reveal what the license for the license is,
>so I'm not sure if I can cut and paste the license text verbatim or not.
>I would think so.

I think you can use it verbatim, yes, as it says you must include a copy if you don't include the URL. But I wouldn't use this to piggyback the license on the associated URI page.

You have to include the URL with the licensed work or include the entire license. Under BY, you may optionally add a URL to be associated with the work. The best place would probably be with the licensing block (copyright, license, license URL, author URI). But the associated URI really is a very separate issue from the link to the CC license, and confusing them is not a good idea at all (IMHO, IANAL).

- Rob.



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