Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

>>>>> "TUG" == Thomas Uwe Gruettmueller <sloyment AT gmx.net> writes:

    TUG> However, if I give a warranty, billions of people can start
    TUG> suing me in this situation.

Let's say that you publish something that's not copyright clean: a
novel about Spock, for example. You disclaim any warranty, even a
warranty on copyright violation. Random House finds it somehow and
(foolishly) publishes it in hardback. Paramount Pictures sues the
publisher to stop publication and recover damages.

Can and will Paramount Pictures sue _you_ for damages, too? Of course
they will. Would they win? Of course they would. You violated their
copyright, and you can't make that go away just by disclaiming any
warranty. 

Can and will Random House sue you for damages? Of course they
will. Would they win? That's the big question. You may point to your
disclaimer of warranty, but I doubt it'd hold up well. If I were an RH
lawyer, I'd say that by publishing the work and releasing some rights
you assert that you are the copyright holder. I'd also say that
there's a catch-22: if you don't have copyright on your work, then no
one is bound by your license, nor its disclaimer of warranty.

The best you can hope for is some limitation on your damages from
Random House. But probably not much.

The upshot: if you're going to self-publish anything, clear the
rights. If you're going to self-publish and allow free redistribution
and/or modification, DEFINITELY clear the rights. Disclaimer of
warranty is not license to be an idiot.

    TUG> The problem here is that when I publish the modified work, I
    TUG> have to warrant that my version is legal. However, there is
    TUG> no safe way for me to determine wether the upstream version
    TUG> was legal.

Duh! Of course there is. You have a license that says so. You have a
warranty from the upstream author. 

Let's say the upstream author wrote:

      A
      B

And you modified it to:

      A
      B
      C

All you have to worry about is if C is clean. A and B are covered.

    TUG> It seems to me that licenses that demand a warranty are a can
    TUG> of worms, and I won't use them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not going to use the CC licenses
anyways, right?

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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