[cc-community] Ask for help: I agreed to a license by mistake

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Thu Feb 21 17:19:09 EST 2008


Cesare Marilungo wrote:
> drew Roberts wrote:

>>>By the way - just for curiosity - how can somebody prove that he got an
>>>mp3 track from a source (and with a particular license in the period in
>>>which the license was applied)? Consider that on Jamendo, the albums are
>>>distributed as a zip file and there's a text file with the licensing
>>>information. Moreover, the license is specified in the id3 tags. The
>>>tracks linked from Opsound were the ones hosted on my own website, which
>>>are simply mp3 files without any licensing info in the tags.
>>
>>Well, in your case, you have admitted that you listed your works with opsound 
>>and all works listed on their site must be licensed BY-SA or be PD.
>
> Yes, I've admitted it. I'm an honest person. I never thought to claim 
> the false. I'm all for truth. :-)

> I'm asking about how can you prove such things because I've made a 
> mistake, 

Note also, however, that he has said the above (and earlier in the
thread as well). I'm fairly certain that if you post something on a site
without *intending* to apply the license in the first case that you are
not obligated to honor it (at least in principle).

The problem is *proving* that you didn't *intend* to apply the license.
There might be enough evidence in this case, though.

This is distinct from the case where you originally *intend* to release
under a given license, then later change your mind.

In other words, I think it has to be a *technical* mistake in which your
action somehow didn't achieve your intent, as opposed to a *conceptual*
mistake in which you later feel that your intent was wrong.

I think that applying a license to creative work has to be a genuinely
*intentional* act.

If this were NOT defensible, then there are a lot of scams that hosting
sites could use to take advantage of authors, by hiding the license
terms in such a way that it's very hard for the authors to read them
(haven't you ever seen a site where the "terms of service" button was a
dead or slow link -- or a rat's nest of interconnected links that
virtually no one would read through entirely?).

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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