[cc-community] Being called a thief for using CC

jonathon jonathon.blake at gmail.com
Sat Feb 16 13:41:45 EST 2008


Miguel wrote:

> There's a project named Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD @
> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/) that publishes  an astronomy picture
> every day along with an explanation.

What license does this site use?

> Then, there's a project named Observatorio.info (http://observatorio.info)
> that publishes the same content, but translated into Spanish, under a
> by-nc-sa CC license.

> "SOMEONE IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OUR FREE TRANSLATION WORK: Support our complaint against the illegal copy of contents from this project"

As best as I can tell, what you are doing is within the bounds of the
CC-BY-SA-NC license.

OTOH, his site violates the CC license, by adding clauses to it,
without changing the name.
* Unless "Aclarcion" means something akin to "This is the my
understanding of what the license permits".
In the context, it looks like it means "This is the exception to which
CC-BY-SA-NC 2.5 license does not apply".

> Taking advantage? Illegal?

"Taking advantage"goes with the territory.
"Illegal":  Not by a long shot.

I'd suggest that whoever chose the license for the site that is being
copied does not understand the license, and chose one that protects
something other than what he thinks he it protects.

What is needed here is user education.
To that end, I'd suggest a FAQ just on the CC Licenses, with the link
at the bottom of the page, as part of the navigation pages.

Alternatively, since it looks like 500 words per day are translated,
have somebody do the translation for your site, and drop the
observatorio.info translations.

xan

jonathon



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