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

Cesare Marilungo cesare at poeticstudios.com
Thu Feb 21 17:24:15 EST 2008


Jonathon and Terry,

That's what I thought. And that's why I pointed out how submitting 
content to other websites (like Jamendo.com) requires a verification in 
which you should put up a page on your website in which the license is 
clearly stated. When you register and you want to publish a work, they 
provide you with the HTML code with the license specified inside it that 
you should put on a page on your server, and provide the link to 
Jamendo. Only after this has been verified, the work is published.

I'm not saying that the people at Opsound are doing this to trick people 
into choosing a license unintentionally. I respect their initiative. The 
submission form may have been changed (it is not present on web page 
archives since it is only accessible when you register and login) and I 
don't remember choosing a license. It was clear to me that the page 
simply linked to the mp3s hosted on my server. As I said before, there 
are lot of other website where you can submit your music where there's 
no need to use any creative commons license at all, or any other kind of 
license. You simply agree to let them use the music for the purpose of 
offering free download or playing of the music. When I subscribed to 
Opsound my understanding was that it was the same as with the website I 
described above (like music.download.com or last.fm) just specific to 
promote creative commons licensed music.

-c.

Terry Hancock wrote:
> 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
>
>   
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.,
>
> 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.)
>
> 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.  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.
>
> There is material out there which was released ARR, but third partties
> have slapped a CC license onto.


-- 
www.cesaremarilungo.com 




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