Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Brian Clark" <bclark AT radzone.org>]

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

True. And I when I saw it, I was suspicious. Having a "registry" at CC that
I could have searched would have served as a confirmation -- if it wasn't
there, I'd have confirmed my seed of doubt, and if it was there I would have
eliminated it. Otherwise, I would have had to email the individual user to
inquire if those rights were open (no different than if it had said "all
rights reserved.")

>To limit damages in a lawsuit or something by showing that
>copyright violation was not intentional?

I'm not a lawyer, so I still don't understand the details of how that all
works (if it was reported as "public domain" in error and someone used it,
where does the liability lay? I have no clue.) Your observation seems
correct to me, though -- especially in the case of where a user changes the
licensing in the future (to either more restrictive or less restrictive.)

>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.

Sure thing -- I popped my head in because I thought I at least understood
what the original poster was aiming towards, and a registry does seem like a
good thing (and making it take an active submission rather than just
spider-harvested from web examination reinforces that it really was a user's
choice, even when housed in a aggregated site like Buzznet.)


Brian