[cc-community] cc license use on participatory art sites, infringement and confusion
rob at robmyers.org
rob at robmyers.org
Mon Dec 4 08:40:52 EST 2006
Quoting Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com>:
> But of course a "license" granted by someone who has no rights in the
> work isn't legally valid. Buzznet can say whatever they like in their
> usage agreement, but they actually are liable for copyright
> infringements when they make them (you aren't signatory to that
> agreement, anyway!) So, if someone illegally posts a work and claims it
> under a CC license, that doesn't actually mean it *is* under a CC
> license, so the fear that people who download the work and use it
> according to the terms of that license are legally entitled to, is not
> founded (CC licensing may increase the probability of such behavior, but
> users do have some obligation to use a little common sense).
The example I use is that at some point we will see someone post Star Wars to
OurMedia under a CC license. I think the DMCA/EUCD "safe harbo(u)r" provisions
mean that this isn't a problem for the host site (unless they hep to tag the
work, perhaps?).
> I have, in a similar vein, seen GPL or CC licensed KDE or Gnome themes
> which are based on licensed anime characters or other copyrighted and/or
> trademarked artwork. Clearly those are not actually legal, whatever the
> uploader may have thought.
Yes. In the US, Fan Art is copyright to the original rightsholder. And then
there's the trademark angle.
Java's "Duke" mascot is Free now though. ;-)
> There's a *lot* of bad attribution and infringement on the web, whether
> for CC licensed material or ARR.
I did ask CC to put a notice in the licenses like the OGL has, stating
that you
can only license work that you hold the rights to. It's a redundant statement,
but very useful to be able to point to when someone is making that
mistake. :-)
> How exactly? Are you imagining some kind of certification process to
> recognize when a CC licensing interface is sufficiently clear? Political
> action/pressure? Angry letters? :-)
I think standards for explaining this side of licensing, and some PHP
with good
warnings as part of the licensing process, would be a useful resource.
Larger and more involved projects really should consider FSF-style copyright
assignment which involves signing a legal document identifying you as the
rightsholder. But more freewheeling remix projects probably shouldn't do this.
:-)
>> Otherwise we might reach a point where CC is recognized as "something to
>> do", the license use counter will be ticking like crazy, but the whole
>> pool of works will be slightly spoiled, not a good situation. I think
>> education needs to be tightly coupled with technical means (as always!!).
>
> Agreed.
Part of the problem is that CC cannot redress the need to remix
non-CC-licensed
works. This is not CC's problem, it is society's problem, but it will
occasinally express itself through mis-use of CC licenses.
Even some showcase CC-licensed works incorporate Fair Use works in Fair
Dealing
jurisdictions or use sample disks that don't play well with CC. We need some
"clean roots" for free culture, large bodies of rigorously checked work like
the FSF maintain for software.
- Rob.
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