Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: Why remove the warranty in the 2.0 licenses?

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Why remove the warranty in the 2.0 licenses?
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 13:19:16 -0500

>>>>> "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>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page