Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam AT codegnome.org>]

On Thu Feb 19 04:20:33 EST 2004, Evan Prodromou wrote:

>for any of these type of works. Every contract I've ever seen or signed
>for written work has had an indemnification and warranty, and I've seen
>one or two for music that have similar clauses.

Withouty dignifying your obvious flame-bait, I think you're missing the
point: the license is not a contract, it is a set of permissions provided
to a downstream licensee. If someone wants to enter into a contractual
agreement with you, there's nothing in the license to prevent them from
doing so.

A contract requires consideration, which involves the exchange of value.
In an ideal world, the value is high enough to justify the additional risk
of making warranties or agreeing to indemnification. A free license to a
downstream user creates no monetary value, so I stand by my statement that
*creating* liability is a bad idea.

There is nothing stopping you from creating a warranty to distribute
alongside your work, if you feel it is important to do so. But *requiring*
it is quite likely to prevent general uptake of the CC license, and is the
main reason my company is currently leaning towards the GFDL for
distribution of written materials.

-- 
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