Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

>>>>> "JBN" == J B Nicholson-Owens <jbn AT forestfield.org> writes:

    JBN> Simplicity.  Simpler licenses are better particularly when
    JBN> dealing with people who don't read licenses a lot (which
    JBN> would be most of the public, certainly the copyright holders
    JBN> that CC is trying to sway to use CC licenses).  I think when
    JBN> people are faced with reading less in a situation like this,
    JBN> they are more likely to read what's there.

That's pretty fair, although I'm wondering if it wouldn't be
reasonable to add in an explicit disclaimer of warranty for clearing
rights:

        "The Licensor has not done even a reasonable review to make
        sure that they have the right to publish this work or license
        it to You. They are too busy with their frantic blogging
        schedule to be bothered with clearing rights before publishing
        works, and anyways that stuff's really confusing. If You
        exercise any of the rights granted in this license -- which
        the Licensor may not have rights to grant to You in the first
        place -- You put Yourself at legal risk. You need to do
        complicated research to make sure that the Licensor actually
        has the rights to grant You this license any time You use or
        distribute this work or Derivative Works. That goes for You,
        You, You, You, You, You over there, and You too. It's doubtful
        that the Licensor will help any of You in this research (did
        we mention the frantic blogging schedule?) as they don't
        really understand what copyright, trademark, privacy rights,
        publicity rights, defamation, or other hard stuff like that is
        in the first place. In other words, this license may be useful
        for wiping Your ass with, if You waste a few sheets of paper
        to print it out, but not much else. But all the cool bloggers
        have that 'Some Rights Reserved' rectangle at the bottom of
        their pages, so Licensor thought it'd be boss to have one
        too. Kinda like the What is Your Wu-Tang Name thing. By the
        the way, Licensor's Wu-Tang name is 'Greasy Choirboy'. Isn't
        that sucky?!."

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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