[cc-licenses] Creative Commons licenses cause a problem
Nancy Ide
ide at cs.vassar.edu
Tue Jun 6 08:48:44 EDT 2006
On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:15 PM, Peter Brink wrote:
> I really don't understand your problem. Why would your data-mining
> project violate anyones copyright? What is your infringement case,
> that
> is how do you think you would violate the copyright of the works you
> gather statistics from?
>
This is the legal advice from the lawyers at the University of
Pennsylvania's Linguistic Data Consortium, which distributes the ANC.
We are re-distributing the texts, with restrictions for commercial
users (see our licenses at http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Projects/ANC/ ),
and this apparently would violate the share-alike and non-commercial
strictures. Share-alike says we have to allow them to re-distribute
themselves, and we don't let commercial users do so (although
research users can).
But I agree with you. What we do with the texts isn't going to
violate any copyright laws *in spirit*, and if we went to court over
it we may even win. But my guess is the UPenn lawyers want to avoid
even the remote possibility of a lawsuit, whether or not we have a case.
What does this group think? By downloading a CC licensed text from
the web, adding some linguistic info to it and re-distributing it for
research use, with strong strictures on re-publication (e.g., putting
a whole text out on the web again), do we violate the CC license? I
would like to hear from someone who is from CC on this, because if it
were felt we could use CC licensed texts that specify share-alike and
non-commercial, we'd be in very good shape.
I think it is clear that what the CC licenses intend to say about use
of the materials is that (a) if a text is re-distributed it has to be
done under the same terms; and (b) there should be no commercial use
of the materials, i.e., re-publishing them for profit etc. We are not
doing that, but it is a gray area as to whether using the text to
gather statistics about language use and then publishing a dictionary
on that basis is a commercial use. Common sense says it is not a
violation, but common sense and the law (especially in this new and
murky area) are not always in synch.
Any thoughts on this issue would be welcome.
Thanks,
Nancy Ide
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