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cc-licenses - Re: Warranty in next version of CC licenses

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Sal Randolph <sal AT highlala.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Warranty in next version of CC licenses
  • Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 19:18:44 -0500


On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:24 PM, Evan Prodromou wrote:

Actually, now that I think of it, I've convinced myself that I _do_
see some benefit: reducing the multiplier effect of free content
publishing. For example, I publish a short story on my personal Web
site and release it under an Attribution license. Universal Studios
takes this story and makes a major motion picture that grosses $200
million (with a kindly reference to me in the film credits).

However, it turns out that I just copied the whole thing from a 1972
collection of works by Erica Jong, and she sues Universal for the
whole $200 million. The warranty clause would seem to me to require me
to indemnify Universal for $200 million. If I'd never licensed it
under Attribution, the worst I could expect would be a takedown notice
from Ms. Jong's lawyer.

Yes, this is it exactly. Personally I am a kind of flow-through aggregator of lots of various musical content (or my project is: Opsound). I know there are people doing more or less illegal music sampling who are participating in my project. They do this publicly all the time, and honestly, I'm not against it. What worried me about the warranties (and it worried me a lot) is that by joining my project, these artists were putting themselves in a *much* worse legal and liability situation than if they just put their music up on their websites with no license notices. And I'm pretty sure that most of them didn't read carefully enough to be aware of it. I didn't get it until we were quite far in. From my point of view, the Opsound project is about doing good things for the participants, not making their situation worse. I do understand that they can't legally license content that isn't theirs, of course, and I emphasize that (and exhort people to read the license) on my site. But I don't want to make the situation extra severe for people who do this kind of sampling for artistic reasons and may be a bit careless as they click "yes."

--Sal

http://www.opsound.org
sal AT opsound.org





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