Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 8 Feb 2004, at 21:56, Evan Prodromou wrote:

> What bothers me is that the argument that was specifically about
> creating _additional_ licenses seems to have been reinterpreted into
> changing _all_ licenses. There is great value for publishers, users,
> creators of derivative works, and, yes, even original authors
> themselves in having the warranty section. Removing it for a minority
> of creators who don't feel comfortable with asserting and warrantying
> their right to publish makes the work of the rest of us less useful
> and worthwhile.

Absolutely. And there's another side to this that has escaped the 
bloggers. Their ISP is a publisher. There's no way that as an ISP I'd 
accept one of the Magic Shield licenses the bloggers seem to want. I'm 
not publishing something that the author refuses to represent that they 
have the rights to!

And likewise there's no way that as a blogger I'd quote or link to a 
site that used a GPL-style pass-the-buck clause. I don't want to get 
sued because I quote someone else who's decided that everything on the 
internet is free so they're going to infringe. FUD aside this is more 
likely with all risk passed on to me than with the responsibility of 
checking that Lucasfilms really have CC'd "Star Wars". So no warranty 
would be a major own goal for the people who want it!

Disclaimers have nothing to do with creating a commons and everything 
to do with avoiding responsibility. Which isn't possible without such 
licenses and it's not really Creative Commons job to try to provide 
them.

> I realize my continual harping on this issue is probably pretty
> annoying. I apologize for that.

Blah, blah blah OGL clause 5 blah blah blah. :-)

- Rob, who has a weblog at http://www.robmyers.org/weblog ...