Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

>>>>> "CA" == Christiane Asschenfeldt <christiane AT creativecommons.org> writes:

    CA> time stamping and digitally signing licenses

Just out of curiosity, whom am I addressing? Are you Christiane or
Jochen? Is one a pseudonym for the other? Was this message just
bounced to the list?

Also, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, I don't speak for
Creative Commons.

    CA> What's about time stamping and digitally signing the licenses
    CA> Creative Commons issues via its great WEB-page?

?? This might be a language issue, but I'm not sure what the hell this
is supposed to mean. Creative Commons doesn't issue licenses from the
Web site. Creative Commons develops licenses (at an alarming rate),
and there's a special form to choose which license works best for you.

    CA> The idea behind: title, authors name and time stamp in the
    CA> license - which cannot be altered afterwards - documents who
    CA> holds the rights and what permissions were given. Being new to
    CA> this list maybe I've missed the discussion of this point
    CA> before.

I doubt there's been discussion on the issue before.

I think what you're saying is this: someone fills in a Web form
identifying the work, their name, and the license they've chosen, and
the Web form spits back some kind of metadata, digitally signed by
Creative Commons.

That sounds like a really bad idea to me. First, Creative Commons is
not a party to the license between creator and the world. It probably
also should not act as a notary or witness to that license --
especially since it has no means to verify that the Web user is who
they say they are, or that they have any ownership of the work they've
entered under the license. Having a record that says this:

        I hereby certify that {http://www.microsoft.com/} is put under
        the {Creative Commons Share-Alike License} by its owner,
        {John Q. Fakename}.
                                        Signed this {30 Jan 2004},
                                               Creative Commons

...doesn't do anything except make Creative Commons look like an
idiot.

I also fail to see what benefits the timestamps or digital signatures
provide. If the _creator_ digitally signed the work, and users had
some way of verifying the signature, there would be some
advantage. You would know that the person really did offer you this
license, and if you were sure they created the work, you would know
that the work was really licensed.

But having Creative Commons do it? False security.

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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