[cc-community] non-revocable cc license for collection to be donated to an archive?
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Thu Jan 31 10:31:40 EST 2008
john martirano wrote:
> We, the Salvatore Martirano Foundation, have a body of work (perhaps 30,000
> physical and digital items) which we plan to license via the CC Attribution
> license.
Given such a large gift, you might seriously want to consult a real live
lawyer instead of just this community list!
However, on the surface of things, it would seem you should be fine with
the CC-By license, because:
1) CC-By allows you to specify almost any kind of attribution you want.
So if you want it to say "UI Archive", then that should be fine.
2) CC licenses are irrevocable, and transfer to anyone who gets a copy
of the work, so as long as the Archive doesn't *legally derive* a *new
work* from the work in the collection, then they can't revoke the terms
of CC-By from any user (they could theoretically grant additional
rights, but with CC-By there isn't much point).
3) If they do legally derive a work, they'll have the same rights as
anyone else using the work, which, under CC-By, means they can put the
derivative under a more restrictive license. The only way to avoid that
is to use CC-By-SA instead, but you seem to want to avoid that. There's
not really any way to restrict the Archive more than users of the
archive (at least not under CC licenses, and ISTM that it's not a good
idea).
As for details of the agreement...
If you are *transferring* the copyright ownership of the material to the
Archive, then you'll need to make releasing the work under a CC-By
license a condition of the transfer.
On the other hand, it's not clear to me that you have to transfer the
copyright -- just license it yourself, and let the Archive hold it. The
By license should give them as much leeway as they need. (?)
As for copyrighted works within the collection, that's easily dealt
with. Just state that the works within the collection are "CC-By unless
otherwise noted". Then be sure to properly mark everything that has some
prior copyright.
> Several questions occur to me.
> 1) is this non-revocable securing of the CC license something that i put in
> the license itself or perhaps in the Deed Of Gift? (DOG is a standard
> contract in which the donor gives a collection pursuant to a set of criteria
> that must be followed for its care or use.)
> 2) from what i saw of the public dedication it seems to be non-revocable, I
> would like that status but with an Attribution requirement, is that
> possible?
It is the case with all CC licenses.
In fact it is my understanding that CC-By is on stronger legal footing
than the public domain dedication, and that that's why CC0 is being
introduced.
> 3) existing copyright issues may arise because a small portion of the work
> already is copyrighted, can I have a blanket CC license for the body of work
> and merely note an exception for a list of previously copyrighted elements
> in the collection? rather than designate the license for each and every of
> the many items?
"Unless otherwise noted, material in the collection is under the
Creative Commons Attribution license, version X"
You must, of course, be careful about listing all of the exceptions. But
you knew that.
> 4) is one solution that i simply Attribute the work to the Archive where the
> collection is held, but still hold the copyright personally so that it
> cannot be changed?
Yes.
> what happens when i die?
Well, the clock starts ticking on copyright expiration, of course. It
used to be life+50, but I can't remember what it is now. Certainly it's
a long time.
> can I ensure that the ability
> to freely disseminate the work is not revoked?
The CC-By will have done that for you.
Again, though, I'm not a lawyer, and this sounds like a big gift, so you
might want to talk to one.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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