Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>]

drew Roberts skrev:
> On Friday 25 March 2005 10:08 am, Greg London wrote:
> > I'm starting to think the focus should be on the removal
> > of moral rights. Unfortunately, what little I know and
> > have heard about european law around this, is that
> > European law does not allow an author to say up front:
> >
> > "I promise to never open the trap door underneath you"
>
>
> Do the licenses allow specification of controlling legal jurisdiction? If not, 
> could they and would this lead to a way to circumvent.
>
> Could you have include in the license a restriction by the original author 
> that if any derivative authors bring a suit on moral rights then they are in 
> violation of the original authors copyrights?
>
> Could you have the original author make the promise in a jurisdiction without 
> moral rights, so that if they bring a suit in a moral rights country, the 
> person they are bringing the suit against could counter-sue in the country in 
> which the promise was made?
>
> Other ideas?
>
> At this point, let's please all try not to get bent out of shape. Let's 
> explore possibilities to accomplish all objectives as well as have the 
> discussion as to which objectives we whould persue.

Trying to circumvent moral rights would be good way to kill off CC in 
Europe - if that is what you want - go head.

The aim of a CC license is to create a way for creators to allow others 
to reuse their works in a safe way. The safety must apply to both 
parties, both the licensor and the licensee must be able to trust the 
license. Trying to take away the founding stone of copyright (from the 
European perspective) from the licensor is not a wise move. The rules 
regarding moral rights are there to prevent a creator from being forced 
to yield his copyright. Trying to go around this protection is not going 
to make the license look very tempting to most creators, a few probably 
wouldn't mind but the larger part of the possible users of a CC license 
(in moral rights countries) are going to scared away.

Let it be - let moral rights remain outside the license, that is going 
to be the best in the long run.

/Peter Brink