Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Alvin Oga wrote:
> > - Your new license isn't widely understood or trusted.  People have to 
> > actually read it to be comfortable with it.  That imposes a very high 
> > cost on licensors.
>
> legal advise usually costs an arm and leg and using poor agreements will
> cost even more later in blood battles ( court )
>  
> > - Your license may not be legally solid.  The existing CC licenses have 
> > been written by top law firms. (Aside: Someone once observed that if CC 
> > counted value in a manner similar to the RIAA, we'd have created many 
> > billions of dollars of value -- multiply the market rate of the time 
> > donated by very expensive lawyers working pro bono on the licenses by 
> > the total number of people using CC licenses...)
>
> finding the "reasonable attorneys" is the trick ..
> a tradeoff between they want to do this type of work vs ones that wants
> their $400+/hr fees

Um, yeah.  Those are both arguments for using a license that has already 
been written by good attorneys and that you can use for free, e.g., a 
standard CC license.

> > Also, FWIW, I understand that James Grimmelmann is working on better 
> > explanations of what non-commercial actually means.  You can see some 
> > posts from him on this list and cc-community, e.g., 
> > <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2004-June/000968.html>. 
>
> cool, but it's the typical kinko printing copyright question or not
> which involves a 3rd party  vs  the "licensor and user" non-commercial
> usage that i want to clarify 

I wasn't suggesting that the post referenced above answered any of your 
questions, just that you can ask questions about non-commercial here and 
perhaps get answers.

> i'm thinking, the other way to add those venue, definition, attorney fee
> would be to add it into a "FAQ" but that would NOT be part of the 
> license, which means is it a legally binding agreement ??

I really should have no idea as a non-lawyer, but I don't see how 
including other terms in a FAQ would be legally binding on someone who 
accepted a separate license.

> with venue, its defined by law, where on can and cannot file suit
> and most corp are incorporated in delaware so guess where you will
> be heading to answer suits against you

This is also wildly out of my area of expertise, but couldn't you sue a 
company in a jurisdiction other than the one the company is incorporated 
in if the company does business in the jurisdiction you want to sue it in?

--
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21