Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>]

So, here's a stupid literalist jailhouse lawyer* question, but it's
kind of bothering me.

Looking at the Attribution license, section 4a. says in part:

    "If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor
    You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective
    Work any reference to such Licensor or the Original Author, as
    requested. If You create a Derivative Work, upon notice from any
    Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the
    Derivative Work any reference to such Licensor or the Original
    Author, as requested."

In other words, you have to take out the licensor's name if they ask
you.

But 4b. says:

    "If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
    publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or
    Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for
    the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the
    medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or
    pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied;"

In other words, you have to provide the licensor's name if you're
going to exercise the license terms.

I am no lawyer, but to me it doesn't seem to actually say, "Unless
they told you not to, in which case don't."

I guess you could interpret a request to remove the licensor's name as
not "supplying" the name, but it's not really that explicit.

Could this be used to arbitrarily revoke the license? "I want you to
remove my name, which you have to do under the license, but you can't
redistribute this work or derived works without my name, so you just
can't redisribute at all."

~ESP

* I am not an actual jailhouse lawyer. This is not jailhouse advice.

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan AT wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide