[cc-licenses] Moral rights in Creative Commons licenses
Karl Ebener
myonlyb at vollbio.de
Mon Oct 1 01:23:13 EDT 2007
Hi Javier,
>> According to what you write above, it will apply within Spain, whether
>> the license mentions it or not (it isn't legal to remove this right).
>>
>> But if the clause is included in the CC license, then you enforce this
>> oddity of European law onto Americans as well. Normally we (in the US)
>> do not recognize the idea of "moral rights" in a work (which is part of
>> our general theory that copyright is not a 'natural' right, but rather a
>> state-granted monopoly on an otherwise free activity -- copying
>> information).
>>
>
> I like the USian view, and generally I have been against including any
> reference to moral rights in the licenses. But I have changed my mind, and
> now I think moral rights should be mentioned... in order to circumvent them.
>
of course, your idea to pseudo-waiver is nice, as it would make people
think about their moral rights and most likely prevent many of authors
to use them.
Still, I disagree. It is right, that lawyers take clauses into general
terms and conditions of which they know that they are void.
Nevertheless, in my personal opinion, willingly adding void clauses
"weakens" a contract in general.
This "weakness" is a big problem of the GPL and I find it very
consistent that the CC-licenses are not only translated but also adapted
to national laws. This feature makes them much stronger (as well as seen
by law as morally!) and thus more enforceable if a licensee does not
comply with the terms of the license (e.g. in Germany once again Skype
and GPL (just google it) - German courts were very generous with the
GPL, especially regarding the language.).
Cheers,
Karl
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