Development of Creative Commons licenses

[email AT greglondon.com]

Evan Prodromou said:
>>>>>> "e" == email  <email AT greglondon.com> writes:
>
>     e> These two concerns seem to point to
>     e> indemnification being of no value to Ike.
>
> And Alice says, "Steve, if you make
> that stuff available under a CC 1.0 license, you give
> people a warranty. They can sue you personally if they
> get in any trouble over it."
>
> Steve: "Um... OK, I guess we can think up something else
> to put in here."

You're not presenting this quite fairly though.

Steve knows he can get sued, but the reality
is that Paramount goes after Ike. Ike goes after
Alice. And then Alice goes after Steve (assuming
the case where Steve contributed the "Ghost"
clip to a different project and Alice used it
under the assumption it was clean.)

At the very least, there is a layer of protection
to Steve from being sued by Paramount. If Indemnification
meant Paramount had to sue Steve directly, then things
change, but as it is, the further down the chain,
the less likely the lawsuit is going to make it all
the way back to Steve.

Every civil suit has to prove beyond a 50 percent
doubt that the person being sued did the damages.
When you get to small time contributers, was Steve
the one who posted the file? was he the ONLY one
who posted infringing material? can you prove that
beyond 50% doubt?

If Napster 1.0 could have sued its users to recoup
damages from all teh illegal file sharing for which
it had to pay damages, would it have survived long
enough for the millions of minor lawsuits to pan out,
or would it have shriveled up in bankruptcy court
before the papers were filed?

And if Steve is an individual contributer, not a
commercial entity, then Steve may have less to lose,
and may view a lawsuit as less damaging than Ike
views it. Bankruptcy could erase any awards Steve
is supposed to pay.

So, I don't think the Steve's of the world will
view Indemnification as quite as large of a
barrier as you portray it.

Ike will view it as a caution because Ike has a lot
to lose. But he did before indemnification too.

Most Open projects have legitimate contributers
like Alice, Bob, and Charlie, not morons like Steve.
And you don't address the risk that ABC take on
in offering indemnification because of morons like
Steve.

Even IF indemnification scares Steve into submission,
you say nothing of any chilling effect indemnification
may have on legitimate contributers.

Theoretically, Alice should be safe from lawsuit,
but what if Alice has deeper pockets than Steve?
What if Alice were AliceIncorporated, a subsidiary
of Pixar Animation? And AliceInc contributed to
the project for good karma. then Ike went and sold it,
and then Paramount comes in and looks at who to sue.
the options are Ike and Alice. Steve isn't even on
the radar.

> 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."

Have you ever read such a misinformed news article?

Did it come from MicrosoftNewsNetwork?

The counter-article would say how open projects such
as linux have dried up because most people are not
willing to risk a lawsuit for someone else's mistake.