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  • From: Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Attribution War
  • Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 13:19:45 -0700

greg -- this is all very solid and correct except for one key point about the *kind* of attribution people have to give.

here are the various kinds of attribution requirements possible under the 2.0 licenses, and the various acts by the licensor that can trigger them:

1) no attribution -- if licensor says "do not attribute this to me" or doesn't provide an a
2) pseudonym attribution -- whatever name the author provides at the point of licensing is the name you must attribute
3) attribution -- ditto, and the default set-up under all 2.0 licenses
4) attribution plus linkback -- only a requirement if licensor specifies a url to link back to; not a default requirement

all of the above tempered by "reasonable to the medium and means" you are using, which i can tell you, is actually a VERY meaningful phrase in contract- and lawyer-speak.

note that these four levels of attribution are all possible under the 2.0 licenses, even if the DEFAULT is that BY is required. we did this intentionally -- more user flexibility but through a simpler UI, fewer licenses, fewer permutations. etc.

thanks

glenn


On May 26, 2004, at 7:18 AM, Greg London wrote:

The By: clause is now built in as standard equipment.
97% of licenses created had the By: option.
It reduces the number of license combinations from 13 to 7.

By: is not the same as Copyright Notice.
A copyright notice is "Copyright 2004 Greg London".
By: is "sort of" like the BSD advertising clause,
except that in software, copyright notices just
naturally tag along, but in almost every other
medium, you've got to do some work to "attribute"
the previous authors and contributers.

The GNU-FDL license includes "Invariant Sections"
which allow the original author to insert
an advertising clause that must tag along with the
document, and must be placed prominently in any
derived works. This won't work for major, multi
contributer works like wikipedia, but if you're
doing a one-man or one-team project, then it might
make sense.

One important caveat, the GNU-FDL will ALLOW the
author to add invariant sections, but it does
not REQUIRE the user to do so. By default, there
are no invariant, attribution-like, sections.
The license contains clear and detailed instructions
on how to add an invariant section.

It sounds like CC licenses will have attribution
"on" by default, which is odd, since the author
should have to add a section like

"with the following attribution clauses:
http://www.greglondon.com";

or something. If the author does not add that
phrase, then downstream authors should not have
to hunt around trying to figure out what the
original author wanted for an attribution phrase.

Do you want a URL as attribution?
Your name? Pseudoname?











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