[cc-community] avoiding the CC licensing path by rights users

Matthew J. Agnello matt.agnello at gmail.com
Sun Apr 13 13:24:47 EDT 2008


> I might suggest, then, that someone (CC's GC?) write a boilerplate  
> form
> for this purpose (and, preferably, a Web interface). This would  
> allow a
> licensee to quickly generate a form requesting the licensor to confirm
> that they licensed the work and that they had the right to do so. You
> could see this as the licensee-side complement to Registered Commons
> <http://registeredcommons.org/> -- perhaps it could even output there.
>
> I suppose this might be seen as undercutting the purpose of the CC
> licenses, which is to remove the guesswork from getting permissions,  
> but
> we know this is more myth than reality. Anybody can paste a license  
> on any
> given work; users are reasonable to want to confirm that the license  
> is
> legitimate and authorized. A little boilerplate could go a long way  
> toward
> that end, and help prevent this kind of end-run around the license  
> we see
> here.

You also have to worry about the privacy issue, and so far there's no  
way to automate this part of the process. This really only applies to  
CC photographs and CC movies, but these make up a large part of the  
content pool.

A photograph with a person has both a copyright restriction (owned by  
the photographer) and a privacy restriction ("owned" by the subject of  
the photograph). The photographer has the right to sell his or her  
photo in the marketplace, facilitated by copyright law. The subject  
also has the right to lead a private life and must waive the  
photographer's liability in such a case so the photographer can  
distribute the picture. Anyone wanting to use the photo has to get  
permission from the photographer (copyright) and from the subject  
(privacy), and CC only covers copyright.

This was the main contention in the Virgin Mobile case[1], and it  
means that anyone who wants to use a CC photograph really should get a  
release from the subject as well. Of course, this rarely happens, and  
we don't know how much of a problem this poses for CC. But it's one  
reason why a big company would opt to go the traditional release form  
route versus operating under the public CC license.

// Matt

[1] CC FAQ on the Virgin Mobile case: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680


----------
Matthew J. Agnello
http://www.hungryfilmmaker.com
< matt.agnello at gmail.com >






On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:11 AM, Gavin Baker wrote:

> On Thu, April 10, 2008 1:51 pm, jonathon wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:56 AM, Alek Tarkowski wrote:
>>
>>> In short, the editors avoided the CC licensing path. There are two
>>> possibilites:
>>> a) they did not notice / know about it - CC markings at Flickr are
>>> notoriously small and there is no clear information / explanation of
>>> what they mean
>>> b) they did not consider this path sufficiently secure
>>
>> c) Due Diligence.  They are verifying that they can use the work that
>> they want to use.   A random photograph on a random website using a
>> random license grants users nothing. (Even if the meta data contains
>> the license terms, they would still have to do this. Metadata can be
>> removed or added by third parties.)
>
> But it sounds like they're not confirming the CC license, but  
> detouring
> around it. They're asking for permission separate from and  
> regardless of
> the CC license. Of course, this is a rather specific detail and it may
> have been lost in translation.
>
> But, regardless of this particular case, there are users who do it:  
> who
> ask for permission separate from and regardless of the CC license.  
> That's
> not due diligence; rather, it's a case of either not understanding  
> the CC
> license, or of using the routine workflow (boilerplate permissions  
> grant)
> and ignoring the CC license. It could also be that the user has more  
> faith
> in the validity / defensibility of their own license than in CC's (if
> something goes wrong, the worker in the permissions department will be
> better served by saying "but I used the standard form" than if their
> defense is "I thought CC would be OK").
>
> As a community, I think we should make the case that due diligence is
> confirming the work's ownership and the validity of the CC license,  
> not
> seeking a separate license. This is important both to promoting CC
> licenses (users understand the licenses by seeing them in action)  
> and to
> defending the public impression of the validity of the licenses.
>
> I might suggest, then, that someone (CC's GC?) write a boilerplate  
> form
> for this purpose (and, preferably, a Web interface). This would  
> allow a
> licensee to quickly generate a form requesting the licensor to confirm
> that they licensed the work and that they had the right to do so. You
> could see this as the licensee-side complement to Registered Commons
> <http://registeredcommons.org/> -- perhaps it could even output there.
>
> I suppose this might be seen as undercutting the purpose of the CC
> licenses, which is to remove the guesswork from getting permissions,  
> but
> we know this is more myth than reality. Anybody can paste a license  
> on any
> given work; users are reasonable to want to confirm that the license  
> is
> legitimate and authorized. A little boilerplate could go a long way  
> toward
> that end, and help prevent this kind of end-run around the license  
> we see
> here.
>
> -- 
> Gavin Baker
> http://www.gavinbaker.com/
> gavin at gavinbaker.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community

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