Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

>>>>> "BC" == Brian Clark <bclark AT radzone.org> writes:

    Me> I also fail to see what benefits the timestamps or digital
    Me> signatures provide.

    BC> Actually, it would have helped in the situation I posted about
    BC> yesterday.  Yesterday, this photo was marked as "public
    BC> domain":

    BC> http://cjid.buzznet.com/user/?id=99597

    BC> But, since Buzznet took off "public domain" as the default,
    BC> the page no longer has any CC license.

And rightly so, correct? Buzznet was labeling the image as public
domain without the copyright holder's permission, if I remember right.

    BC> So if someone used the file when it was marked as "public
    BC> domain" and now the rights have changed ... how would they now
    BC> prove that on the date they used that photo the rights were
    BC> displayed as open? Short of having a cache file or an
    BC> archive.org cache, there'd be no ability to prove that the CC
    BC> mark was displayed there.

Label or no, the image was not released to the public domain. So, what
would the value be in being able to prove that the item was labelled
as PD? To limit damages in a lawsuit or something by showing that
copyright violation was not intentional?

    BC> If CC acted as a repository of timestaps, then we've got
    BC> something different ... if I'm in doubt as to whether a public
    BC> domain notice is legitimate, I can check to see if it has been
    BC> reported to CC (perhaps as part of the search engine?)

    BC> It doesn't mean that CC has to certify ... just chronicle in
    BC> case of future issues.

So, I have to admit, I'm starting to warm to the idea of some kind of
registry. But I don't think it should be Creative Commons that does
it, and I don't think it should occur at license-choice time.

I wonder if Common Content (http://www.commoncontent.org/) would be
more appropriate. They keep a catalog of CC-licensed material, which
Creative Commons does not. People reporting available works give a lot
more information than people choosing a license.

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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