Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

>>>>> "e" == email  <email AT greglondon.com> writes:

    e> These two concerns seem to point to indemnification being of no
    e> value to Ike.

So, here's the value to Ike: Alice, Bob, and Charlie are doing the
movie, and StupidSteve says, "Let's add this 30 minute verbatim clip
from 'Ghost'"! (I'm trying to put Steve's infringement outside the
range of fair use or fair dealing.)

Alice says, "Steve, that's infringing material. We can't redistribute
that; we'd put ourselves in legal jeopardy."

Steve says, "Aw, copyright's just a lot of hoohaw!  And this is a
really good clip! It always makes me cry!"

And Alice says, "Steve, if you [notice second-person singular] make
that stuff available under a CC 1.0 license, you [notice second-person
singular] give people a warranty. They can sue you [2nd person]
personally if they get in any trouble over it."

Steve says, "Uh... I can get sued?"

Alice: "Yeah, for a lot of money, probably."

Steve says, "But, like, if the 'Ghost' people threaten to sue us,
we'll just take our movie off the Web site."

Alice: "That doesn't matter. With a 1.0 license, we're responsible for
any redistribution anyone else does."

Steve: "Um... OK, I guess we can think up something else to put in
here."

In other words, the value isn't in the suit -- we never want to get
there. The value is in keeping sloppy creators from trying to
distribute infringing material under Open Content licenses in the
first place.

Let's take your example if there _wasn't_ a warranty (as there isn't
in the 2.0 licenses). Steve wants to add the clip, and ABC don't like
that it's infringing. Steve points out that the infringement isn't
their problem, and that they explicitly disclaim any non-infringement
representation. So, they release the work, Ike gets sued and loses his
business.

The press has a field day. "Open Content, a movement to infringe on
copyright and steal intellectual property, suffered a crushing defeat
today as copyright owners proved their right to control how their work
is used. The Open Content piracy movement has been stopped --
hopefully for good."

When Danny, Evelyn, and Frank go to publish _their_ Open Content movie
next year, they're screwed. Despite the fact that it doesn't have any
infringing material, nobody will publish it, redistribute it, or share
it on networks. By this point, Open Content means "infringement".

This is going to happen, anyways, sooner or later. But if we at least
have some check on the StupidSteves of the world, by making them
responsible for their stupid actions, maybe it'll be less drastic and
less damaging.

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
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