[cc-community] Relicensing after cc-by-2.0 licence breach

Mia Garlick mia at creativecommons.org
Wed Feb 28 17:31:43 EST 2007


hey paul,

so the definition of "You" under the license contemplates that a  
licensee may continue to use the work despite a previous violation  
but it's kind of conditional on whether the licensor is agreeable to  
that (""You" means an individual or entity exercising rights under  
this License who has not previously violated the terms of this  
License with respect to the Work, or who has received express  
permission from the Licensor to exercise rights under this License  
despite a previous violation.")

i can certainly see your argument, if the work is available  
elsewhere, that you have simple taken out a new license with respect  
the work and are not yet in violation of those terms...certainly,  
once you violate the license your license to use the work terminates  
and your use becomes infringing unless you otherwise obtain  
permission to use the work.

one question i do have though is whether your site is using the  
images under the terms of the CC license or whether you are using it  
under separate terms of use & it is the public who come across it who  
use it under the CC license (this latter arrangement is how flickr  
operates).  in that case, what the CC license says becomes irrelevant  
and its all down to your terms of use.

at the end of the day though, if someone doesn't want you to  
distribute their image any more, regardless of who is right and who  
is wrong, why do it? they reduce their exposure and you get a hassle  
free inbox!!

rgds, mia

On Feb 28, 2007, at 2:21 PM, Paul Dixon wrote:

> The short version: If I breach the CC licence terms, can I simply
> re-licence the work by bringing myself back into compliance, or have I
> rendered myself permanently unable to use that work?
>
> Here's the story that lead to that question:
>
> I help to run www.geograph.org.ok, a growing archive of 300,000+ CC
> licenced photos of the UK and Ireland. We ask all contributors to  
> adopt
> a cc-by-sa 2.0 licence on their submissions.
>
> A photo contributor changed their attribution credit from their  
> name to
> "All Rights Reserved" which naturally confused site visitors and in
> particular, users of our image feeds. We assumed the contributor now
> wished to have their attribution removed, and so changed the  
> attribution
> to "uncredited".
>
> This was an unfortunate error on our part, and when it was brought  
> to my
> attention by the contributor I immediately restored the original  
> credit.
>
> However, the contributor now asserts we have breached the licence and
> must remove his photographs. My counterclaim is the works are
> permanently available to anyone who wishes to comply with their terms.
> By restoring the credit, we have, in effect, simply re-licenced the
> works from the global pool of CC works.
>
> I'm pretty sure I'm right, but happy to hear confirmation either  
> way....
>
>
> Paul Dixon
> Geograph Project
>
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