Licensing ideas and online communication

Mike Linksvayer ml at creativecommons.org
Thu Jan 8 17:19:12 EST 2004


Maxim Oustiougov wrote:
> First of all - does default copyright apply to ideas, or just to the form in
> which they have been expressed (i.e., does it apply to an idea expressed in
> the blog post, or the post itself)? As far as I understand, anything that uses
> the idea would be considered a derivative of the post which contained it - how
> does default copyright handle it?

My ill-informed understanding is that default copyright doesn't cover 
ideas at all, only expressions, i.e., the blog post itself.

> Second - what would be the best license option, from Creative Commons point of
> view, to protect content on a blog from being commercially exploited, or being
> used without a credit (attribution)? Would a combination of BY+NC work for
> this purpose? Our would NC be enough? Would it really cover derivative from
> IDEAS in the posts (again, it goes back to the first point).

by-nc would work for blog content, but there are no idea police.  YMMV. :-)

> Third - if one wants to allow certain rights to content of an e-mail, what
> would be the best option (technically and CC-wise) to do that? Besides e-mail,
> there are also comments on forums or blogs, reviews on web sites, etc.
> Commonly, commercial web sites collecting reviews and comments (not in blogs)
> claim copyright and ownership on them as soon as they are posted - is there a
> good way to combine the rights of a site owner with the rights of the author?

I honestly don't know what rights are retained by authors contributing 
reviews say to Amazon, but I don't know why you couldn't require posters 
to give you permission to use their postings on your site and retain 
copyright, or license their postings to the public under by-nc, but 
separately allow you to make commercial use, or one of many variations. 
  You might want a lawyer to help you.

-- 
   Mike Linksvayer
   http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21



More information about the cc-licenses mailing list