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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: DAVID MUNGER <DSMUNGER AT charlotte.uncc.edu>
  • To: licenses AT creativecommons.org, <licenses AT creativecommons.org>
  • Subject: Legal disclaimer on Creative Commons Deeds/licenses
  • Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:56:39 GMT

Hi--

I just wanted to applaud you on your great work in setting
up the deed/license arrangement for publicly licensing
works.

I am particularly impressed by how you've handled
copyleft. "Share alike" is a much friendlier term that gets
to the heart of what copyleft is all about. I also think
it's essential that the share alike provision allows for a
work to be anthologized without the entire anthology being
copylefted. Good work!

My organization, Commontext (http://www.commontext.org), a
publisher of freely shared classroom texts, is planning to
make use of the Creative Commons license for all of the
works we publish, so I'm very glad to see you're making
progress!

However, I do have one suggestion:

Would it be possible to remove the legal disclaimers from
the deeds and licenses themselves? I understand that it's
important for Creative Commons to protect itself from
possible litigation, but couldn't this notice be placed
somehow "in front" of the license, so that in order to use
a Creative Commons license, content authors would have to
assent that they are not viewing Creative Commons as a law
firm, etc. The actual end user isn't concerned with this
aspect of the license, so I don't see why such a disclaimer
needs to be placed on the license itself.

The deed and license themselves are intended to be read by
potential users of a work. As a user of a document, when I
read a legal notice, I don't assume that someone is
offering me legal advice. For example--EULAs, contracts,
the fine print at the bottom of contest application, etc. I
think you'd be hard pressed to find a legal notice,
contract, or license that feels obligated to note that it
isn't offering legal advice. Of course, I'm not a lawyer,
so I couldn't say for sure, but it just doesn't seem
necessary in this case.

However, as a writer, if the Creative Commons deed is going
to be placed on my work, I'm uncomfortable having the legal
disclaimer there. It makes it seem too scary. I think
readers might be intimidated by it in ways that they
wouldn't be by a more traditional public license or
copyright notice.

And of course, since my intention in publicly licensing my
work is to have as many others reproduce it as possible, I
don't want possible republishers to be intimidated by it
either.

Hope you find this feedback helpful!

Best,

Dave
--
Dave Munger
UNC Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001

http://49web.uncc.edu/~dsmunger
dsmunger AT charlotte.uncc.edu

http://www.commontext.org/




  • Legal disclaimer on Creative Commons Deeds/licenses, DAVID MUNGER, 10/16/2002

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