Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Brian Clark" <bclark AT gmdstudios.com>]

>Also, since the band is giving away the music for free,
>it satisfies at least one of the "fair use" doctrines.

Actually, whether or not your are charging for the work doesn't really
impact the "fair use" implications (at least as far as copyrights are
concerned.) Evan hit it on the nose with "The metric is actually
if the use deprives the owner of income."

>"Unfortunately, the only way to get a definitive answer on whether
>a particular use is a fair use is to have it resolved in federal
>court. [...] A judge has a great deal of freedom when making a
>fair use determination and the outcome in any given case can be
>hard to predict."

Absolutely spot on -- the best you can do is prepare what your defense would
be if you were challenged (something we spent a massive amount of time doing
for "Nothing So Strange" given our unusual production circumstances.) We
have yet to receive a legal challenge, but we have had our response to any
challenge worked out since the production started.

Don't let this stop you: being able to make a convincing argument about it
being parody might be the best assurance you can make for yourself before
distributing. And in most cases, even if you are challenged and don't feel
like defending your case, you can just acknowledge the "cease & desist" and
... well ... cease & desist (we did that once with a CNN parody, and again
with a site that "looked" like the LA District Attorney website, in both
cases because they finally got around to asking us to "cease & desist" and
we decided those small pieces weren't worth putting too much defense effort
into.)

Best,


Brian Clark
  homepage: http://www.radzone.org/bclark/
  "Nothing So Strange": http://www.nothingsostrange.com