iCommons Switzerland

["Claude Almansi" <claude.almansi AT bluewin.ch>]

Hi Corsin and All

Corsin, please bear in mind that I am no lawyer: if I still presume to
attempt an answer to your question, it is just because the people who
are really informed are rather busy preparing the launch of the Swiss
CC-licenses.

On 4/30/07, Corsin Camichel <cocaman AT gmail.com> wrote:
> (...)
>
> Frage 1: Was heisst "Die für das Schweizer Recht adaptierten Creative
> Commons Lizenzen"? Was musste da genau angepasst werden?

While copyright laws in all countries are all based on international
treaties (Bern Convention and offsprings), there are differences from
country to country. For instance in the legal status of collecting
societies. This is the reason for the national adaptations.Top right
of http://creativecommons.org, there is a drop-list entitled "Select a
jurisdiction": you'll see that several other countries also have
adapted licenses.

People from OpenLaw.ch will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that
the adaptations regard the Legal Code part of the license, while the
Human Readable version and the Machine Readable version remain
identical to the International version for all countries.

> Frage 2: Wenn es nun eine angepasste Schweizer Version gibt der CC,
> wie erkennt der Benutzer/User den unterschied? Gibt es spezielle
> Buttons?

The difference - from what I have seen in other nationally-adapted
licenses - is in the URLof the page linked on the button and on the
words "some rights reserved" - but buttons are the same.
> Frage 3: Wieviel Zeit hat die ganze Anpassung benötigt?

I remember that  the OpenLaw team was already working on the
adaptation early in 2004, but I don't know when they actually began.

> Frage 4: Was werdet ihr als nächstes unternehmen?

Again, you'll get more precise answers about some concrete plans from
others, but I would prefer to reformulate your question as "What shall
we do next?", because it is up to all of us, really. Considering that
the CC licenses' aim is to preserve access to information and
knowledge, and to do so by getting creative  (see the movie
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/), there are many
possible initiatives. Not completely off the cuff (1), here are some
domain of possible actions:

- remain watchful about what happens with the revision of Swiss Copyright Law
- Incite content producers that are financed by public monies
(Universities, SSR SRG, Museums, some foundations) to use non
restrictive licenses for their web content
- further knowledge of resources under CC licenses, not only
theoretically or by pointing to repertories, but by organising events
(concerts, exhibitions, film projections,  debates).
- further understanding of how CC licenses actually work , in
particular of how to fully register a work under a CC license (i.e.
get the identifying computer code for it, with all the info about the
work and the author in the code).

Best

Claude

(1) I have followed some of the CC initiatives, Swiss and
international for a while, though  mainly as a translator.

--
Claude Almansi
CH-6532 Castione
gruppo di lavoro Noi Media www.noimedia.org
Swiss Internet User Group www.siug.ch