[Cc-uk] CC licensing by minors
Jonathan Sanderson
lists at quernstone.com
Tue Mar 21 05:28:23 EST 2006
Hello all. My apologies for barging in and kicking off with a query.
I'm staging a small-scale pilot of a video production project, backed
by a national funding organisation. Copyright to the works produced
will be held by the originators (workshop participants); I plan to
encourage them to license their work (most likely BY-NC-SA) so it may
be published on the project website. In return, I will license my
contributions to them, under the same terms. So far so good.
However, some of the workshop participants will be school students.
The legal advice I have goes like this:
In England, the age of capacity for the purposes of contract law is
18 years old, and a minor's contracts are voidable at his or her
option - they are enforceable (so executing a CC license would offer
protection for the licensor), but not binding until explicitly
ratified on coming of age. Hence, in principle the CC license could
be revoked several years after initially being granted, potentially
exposing the licensee.
I'd be delighted to hear from anyone with experience of using CC
licenses with minors. What issues did you face, and what approach did
you take? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
I should also add that there's considerable excitement from the
funding organisation around the approach I'm taking. Traditionally,
they've demanded all rights to everything done in their name, but we
seem to have successfully challenged that and got them thinking about
their approach.
--
Jonathan Sanderson
'If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.' (Pascal)
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