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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Non commercial question...

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller AT gmx.de>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Non commercial question...
  • Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 21:04:47 +0200

Patrick Crosby:
I have a question about the non-commercial cc license:

Say someone created a community website where the users contributed
content (i.e. a wiki), and when they submitted the content it was
clear that the content would be licensed under a creative commons
license that has non-commercial in it.

Does the owner of the website have the right to make money off the
content (through ad revenue, for example), or is the website itself a
"user" and subject to the non-commercial portion of the license that
the user contributed the content under?

Let's say you run a wiki with a shared hosting company that is funded using ads (like Geocities), and you don't choose *any* license. What would be the implicit understanding of the licensing terms? Contributors would, through their usage of the wiki, implicitly agree that the content has advertising on it. (As they would implicitly agree that others have the right to modify it, one of the working principles of a wiki.)

In the context of CC-NC* content, I think it's a similar scenario. The NC license itself would clearly forbid the ads, but the license is not compulsory -- there's no need for the site owner / hosting company to accept its terms. For them, the situation would be similar to a site that allows user submissions and has no copyright policy at all.

So, my understanding is that it would be OK for a wiki to have ads on it to begin with while being under NC, but it would be more difficult to justify putting ads on an existing wiki that doesn't have elastic Terms of Service. In that case, it would probably be best to provide some kind of agreement form for the user base, and an opt-out process to remove existing content.

In any case, as Robert pointed out, the site owner can always set terms of use that allow advertising in adition to the NC license that applies to everyone else. For a new wiki, that is probably the safest route.

That is, if you want to use an NC license at all:
http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC

Best,

Erik




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