[cc-community] confusing use of CC licenses?
jonathon
jonathon.blake at gmail.com
Tue Mar 10 09:15:38 EDT 2009
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 07:52, Alek Tarkowski wrote:
> This seems to me a really confusing use of CC licenses - the whole collection is CC licensed and contains solely works in the public domain.
> Is there any reason to do this?
a) Due diligence: Did the entity that put the CC license on the work
have the right to do so. Furthermore, are the works that the requester
wants to use coved by that CC license, or are they covered by a
different license. (On a personal level, if a work allegedly has a CC
License, but invalid, or no contact information, and/or the metadata
has no license information, my working assumption is that it really
has an "All Rights Reserved" license, and that an unathorised third
party added the CC license to the work.);
b) In some jurisdictions, Homer's original Greek text is still under
copyright. Likewise, all translations of that text are under
copyright. Slapping a CC-BY-SA license enables people to use the text
without any issues;
c) Whilst Homer's original Greek text is public domain, a translation
of it that was published last year, is under a new copyright. [ My
favorite example of this phenomena is the NA-27, which is copyright in
the US, and the UBS-4, which is copyright in Germany. The sole
difference between the two works is in the punctuation, and breathing
marks. Miss a period, and your quote could be the USB-4,rather than
the NA-27 that you thought you were using.] Using a CC-BY-SA license
in this type of situation enables people to use the text, without any
issues;
One project I'm working with, automatically slaps a CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0
license on everything it releases, to cover the above issues. (The NC
part was added, because the intent is for gratis distribution to the
recipient.)
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
jonathon
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