[cc-community] Question about specific attribution requirement for cc-by-sa V3

Nathan Kinkade nkinkade at creativecommons.org
Thu May 5 12:31:45 EDT 2011


Anthony,

Yes, the author owns the copyright, and is not required to release it
under any license at all.  But neither is that person required to
upload any content to any Wikipedia, or related, site.  Wikipedia
sites have terms.  One of those terms deals with licensing.  The SA
term here is irrelevant, because we are discussing attribution, and
every current CC license requires it.  If the author doesn't accept
the way a given CC license handles attribution, then they shouldn't
license it with a CC license, and hence they probably shouldn't be
uploading to a site with any licensing requirements.

The Deed (non legal, non binding, as far as I know) states "You must
attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor",
however the license itself is more precise.  The license states: "The
credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any
reasonable manner;"  I don't know that there is any section in that
license which would legally obligate a licensee to absolutely
attribute directly under the image, and in no other way whatsoever.
Can the copyright holder make a suggestion or request that people
attribute in this way?  I see no problem with that, but I do see a
problem with pretending to make it a binding requirement.

Nathan

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 09:35, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 9:14 AM, drew Roberts <zotz at 100jamz.com> wrote:
>> 8.e. "This License constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with
>> respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or
>> representations with respect to the Work not specified here. Licensor shall
>> not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any
>> communication from You. This License may not be modified without the mutual
>> written agreement of the Licensor and You."
>>
>> from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
>>
>> perhaps v 4.0 should add teeth to this, something like:
>>
>> "You may not use this license to license your works if you try to add further
>> restrictions on the person getting the license from you."
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> Well, the simple description says:  "You must attribute the work in
> the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way
> that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). "
>
>> Would this be a further restriction or a clarification?
>
> I can't find any part of the license which allows for this
> restriction.  HOWEVER, if the CC-BY-SA work is original, then the
> author's clearly expressed terms should be respected regardless of
> whether or not the restrictions are compatible with CC-BY-SA.  The
> author owns the copyright, and is not required to release it under
> CC-BY-SA at all.  And in this case I think that is especially true, as
> the plain English terms clearly state that you must attribute the work
> *in the manner specified by the author*, even though I can't find a
> provision within the license which provides for that.  If the terms
> are not compatible with CC-BY-SA, then the author should be asked to
> stop calling the work CC-BY-SA, we shouldn't just invalidate his
> obvious intent.  (Whether or not the terms are compatible, I don't
> know.  I couldn't find anything in the legalese which allows it, but
> the plain English terms clearly do allow it.)
>
> If, on the other hand, the CC-BY-SA work is derived from a previous
> CC-BY-SA work, then the author of the previous work should contact the
> new author and work something out.
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>


More information about the cc-community mailing list