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

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Thu Feb 21 17:10:46 EST 2008


On Thursday 21 February 2008 16:35:16 jonathon wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Cesare Marilungo wrote:
> >  As I've already said on the LAU list, there are already some websites
> > which are infringing the license putting all my tracks for download on
> > pages full of ads and
>
> The organizations that utilized your music failed to do due diligence.
>
> >From your statements, you did not intentionally release any of your
>
> music under a CC-BY-SA license.
> Since no music that you released was hosted by a site with a CC-BY-SA
> License, no music was released with that license.,

I think you may be wrong in this case. It may be to not having the facts. (You 
may be right, but still not have the facts.) I may not have the facts as 
well, but as I understand it, it went something like this:

Music creator lists works on opsound:

http://www.opsound.org/info/license/

Opsound only will lists works that have a BY-SA license or are PD.

Music creator chose BY-SA as the license option when listing.

Opsound only listed, did not host. But the creator chose the BY-SA option. 
Now, admittedly by the creator, by mistake.

This is how the ball got rolling.

Presumably, people came by opsound, saw the track, listed by the creator / 
copyrightholder as BY-SA licensed with a link back to the creators site where 
the file could be obtained.

They followed the link and got the files. (Or just linked to them? I am 
undclear there.)

I think, so far, this much is not in dispute but I do stand to be corrected.

Now, at this point I would like to take this discussion away from this 
particular instance and go more general.

Let's assume something like this has happened in a general way.

We have two possibilities where the copyright holder did the listing on 
opsound.

1. They made a mistake and thought they were using an NC license od some sort 
when in fact it was BY-SA as opsound has been BY-SA from the beginning.

2. They knowingly chose BY-SA at the time, but now want to change their mind 
and claim they made a mistake in the beginning.

(Again, please do not read anything personal to this case into these two 
possibilities.)

So, how do things stand with respect to people who saw the creators listing on 
opsound and pulled down the file under what they honestly thought was a valid 
BY-SA license under each of the cases 1. and 2. above?
>
> What you have is an instance of where music was erroneously mislabeled
> as regards to its license by a third party host. When the license
> mislabeling was discovered, the error was rectified.
>
> If you lived in the Ninth District of the US, you probably would be
> able to win a copyright infringemenet case.   (In essence,there is no
> difference between this and an ARR work to which a third party slapped
> a CC license without the consent of the copyright owner.)

As I say, this case is a bit more complicated as a third party did not slap 
the license on the work.
>
> I suspect that a DMCA take down order would also have your material
> removed from the offending websites.     (You need to consult an
> attorney for the exact wording.)
>
> ###
>
> Something that organizations don't appear to have learned, is that
> they need to do due diligence on all works that they use.

So are you suggesting that we, and do you, check with all the contributors to 
every GPL or BSD or other Free licensed software program that you use to 
determine that it is indeed licensed as the license file states?

And is every user of a CC licensed work needing to check with the copyright 
holders?

> It doesn't 
> matter what the license allegedly is,they need to verify with the
> copyright owner that the material was indeed released under the
> license that it allegedly is under.

Can Linus now claim that he used the GPL by mistake and the kernel is really 
ARR?
>
> There is material out there which was released ARR, but third partties
> have slapped a CC license onto.
>
> >  What is important for me, is which is my intention. What kind of uses I 
> > endorse.
>
> I'd suggest adding both copyright and license metadata to everything
> you release/distribute.
>
> >  What some people don't understand is that with music (at least with 
> > mine) there are emotions and personal stories involved.
>
> Most music is a personal story.
> (The major exception is that which Clear Chanel calls "music".)
>
> xan
>
> jonathon

all the best,

drew




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