Cc-hk mailing list

[Haggen So <haggen_so AT yahoo.com>]

> ATTENDEES: (Please correct me if I got your name wrong or let me know if I 
> missed your name. I didn't have everybody's full name and not necessarily all 
> titles.)
>
> Dr. Catharina Maracke, International Coordinator, Creative Commons 
> International
> Prof. Ying Chan, Director, HKU Journalism & Media Studies Ctr.
> Li Yahong & Alice Lee, HKU Law Faculty
> Hagen (sorry don't have full name - please let me know)

Not a problem, I did not make the spelling my name known to you on the 
night.  My name is Haggen So ^_^

> Deki - famous "Just a Sidekick" blogger :)
> Janet Lau - City University
> Micky Yip - City U, Legalvoice.hk
> Nicky Tse - Trainee solicitor, Hau, Lau, Li & Yeung
> Paul Cheung - City U., Legalvoice.hk
> Chong Chan-yao HKU director of student dev
> Ben & Oiwan Lam, Inmedia
> Randy Shek - DotAsia lawyer, HKU, etc
> Charles Mok - HK Internet Society etc.
> Kenneth Yip- ASTRI.org - HK Applied Science & Technology Research Institute
> Greg, Chinese U. information engineering student
> Uta Lam - blogger, web 2.0 entrepreneur
> Yat Siu, CEO of Outblaze
> Rebecca MacKinnon, HKU
Just a follow-up question.  I think it was Nicky who brought up the 
question about assistance from CC to defense the licenses.  Catharina's 
response (correct me if I am wrong, as I also have an "illegal mind") was 
that the assistance was minimal as CC was only responsible for providing 
the licenses.  Catharina also hinted that there might be legal 
difficulties if CC became proactive in reinforcing the licenses. The FAQ 
on CC also gives a similar answer 
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Will_Creative_Commons_help_me_enforce_my_license.3F

I dug around the Internet about reinforcing GPL (in short, an 
Attribute-ShareAlike license for software, around since mid-80s) and had a 
number of interesting observations.  I found that there were as least 
three approaches:

1. Free Software Foundation (FSF)
See FSF Free Software Licensing
http://www.fsf.org/licensing

FSF is the administrator of GPL and this foundation also proactively deals 
with license compliance problems.  One reason for this is that FSF holds 
the copyrights for many popular free software programs, such as GCC and 
glibc.  Therefore, they just have to enforce those licenses themselves.
So if an author transfers the copyright of his or her GPLed software to 
FSF, FSF will defense it.  Of course, FSF does not just accept any GPLed 
code and I have to find out more on the criteria.

2. Other than FSF, there are a number of organisations friendly but 
independent from FSF dealing with the enforcement of GPL.  Examples are:

GPL Violations.org Homepage
http://gpl-violations.org/

Software Freedom Law Center
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

3. There is also some information providing sites.  One example is 
Groklaw(http://www.groklaw.net/).  Though it has the "no legal advice" 
disclaimer, this online community contributed substantially to defensing 
Linux in the SCO vs IBM case.

When we consider that GPL Violations.org was established in late 2003, by 
June 2006, they already rectified 100 cases of GPL 
violations(http://gpl-violations.org/about.html#history).  Also from the 
story told by Rebecca and Oiwan, CC license violations happen.  I think it 
may be useful to discuss the approaches listed as a starting point and see 
what can be improved on helping CC users to defense the licenses.

Haggen

> Rebecca MacKinnon
> Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Ctr.
> University of Hong Kong   (http://jmsc.hku.hk)
>
> email: rmack AT hku.hk
> blog: www.RConversation.com
> Tel: +852-2219-4005
>
> Co-founder:
> www.GlobalVoicesOnline.org
> "The world is talking. Are you listening?"