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cc-devel - Re: [cc-devel] liblicense: named constant URIs

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Subject: Developer discussion for Creative Commons technology and tools

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  • From: Jon Phillips <jon AT rejon.org>
  • To: Peter Miller <millerp AT canb.auug.org.au>
  • Cc: creative commons developers <cc-devel AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-devel] liblicense: named constant URIs
  • Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:49:12 -0700

On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 23:33 +1000, Peter Miller wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 21:49 -0700, Jon Phillips wrote:
> > Cool...Peter, what are you thinking now?
>
> I think I'll commit the patch as is. It rounds out the API nicely, and
> doesn't seem to get anybody's dander up.
>
>
> At the risk of confusing things with more than one issue per email, here
> are the immediate things I'd like to do:
>
> (1) in liblicense
>
> I've been looking at implementing my "license intersection" function.
> It seems straight forward, now that I'm more familiar with the code.
>
> But this raises a problem: what if the intersection is the empty set?
> I.e. no rights at all. Is there scope for come kind of "on the fly"
> license URI that can be queried via the API, etc, but never actually
> exists as a URL you could view with a web browser, as you can for CC
> attributes URIs and rights URIs. (Probably the same thing: what if the
> intersection of the permitted rights is valid but isn't a CC license
> combination?)

In the UI for liblicense in gnome we accounted for this with a
warning...really we should put this onto the user...otherwise, if there
is some problem with the license selection, IMO, we shouldn't set a
license...other thoughts of how to do this in the raw liblicense? Jason
and Scott, you guys might have already done this...

> (2) in icon-compositor
>
> In trying to be a conscientious web citizen, I want to be able to
> display copyright notices with icons, as well as the license.
>
> But this raises a problem: there is no place to host copyright
> information within liblicense. This concerns me because I could wind up
> with not one but *two* files alongside each image: the one for the
> license information, and the one for the copyright information.
>
> It gets worse: when I need to say "(C) me, derived from a work (C) Fred
> Bloggs" how do I? We don't have this problem in source code, we just
> add our notice to the list in the header comment, right next to the
> license comment. They belong together in source code - shouldn't they
> belong together in images?

Could you propose a solution to what you are saying...licenses require
copyright, so that is implied...but are you talking a more precise
copyright date too?

>
>
> One more thing: I feel that the CC site (http://creativecommons.org/ns)
> is very unclear on the difference between reproduction and distribution.
> Is distribution == reproduction * N, where n > 0 or n > 1 or n > 42
> or ...? Surely I can make as many copies on my laptop as I like, or is
> there a problem there, too? Is distribution different than
> reproduction? Is distribution different than publication? I.e. giving
> a copy to someone vs making available to world on web site (the
> difference between personally handing out fliers vs leaving them on a
> table for people to pick up as they walk past). I've been wrestling
> with copyright for too many decades to be happy with the nebulous
> wording at the CC web site (and, yes, I get it that the answer varies by
> jurisdiction, I just feel the words could be much much less vague).

Yes, this is the tangled web of copyright...I would suggest to copy and
paste this block onto the cc-licenses and cc-community list to help get
more clarity...the above has much to do with legal precedent and various
legal tests that *could* be applied...at the end of the day this
discussion gets into a discussion about being a copyright minimalist or
maximalist, and is tough once you get into mandating it through code...I
think a good middle path is due!

Cheers!

Jon

>
> Regards
> Peter Miller <millerp AT canb.auug.org.au>
> /\/\* http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
>
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> See http://www.keyserver.net or any PGP keyserver for public key.
>
> "Once you change how you think it makes sense." -- Final Cut Pro easter egg
--
Jon Phillips

San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon AT rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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Please note: the contents of this email are not intended to be
legal advice nor should they be relied upon as or represented to be
legal advice. Jon Phillips does not represent any organization through
this email address.





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