Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

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

And I speak for all of Europe, so you'd better listen to me.

> 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.

Yet 300 million Americans trust copyright without the need for moral rights.
Are we simply fools for not having moral rights in place to prevent
some rich man from tearing our house down around us?
Or is it actually possible to have a workable system that doesn't
require copyright?

Maybe I'm too much of an American here, but I don't see the problem
being one of "trust". I see it as one of "benefit". The people
most strongly arguing for moral rights are the ones who directly
benefit from it.

Lets just say that Moral Rights are not needed. Just say.

I'm hard pressed for any example in human history where
a group of people who enjoy some benefit that isn't actually
needed would take it upon themselves to go out of their way
to surrender that benefit.

So how do I know whether Moral Rights are legitimately needed
to prevent the collapse of Europe, or whether its a simple
case where a lack of Moral Rights would not lead to the
imminent collapse of Europe, but that it's really about
authors not wanting to give up some special benefit they enjoy?

See. You can dance around the issue all you want with
emotional pleas, wild assertions, and word games,
but I'm trying to put it into real-world context here.

And the real-world evidence I have that suggests moral rights
are not required for a workable copyright system is America.

You keep making these extremely emotional cases for Moral
Rights, but the practical truth of the matter is that
they aren't needed. Somehow America manages without.

And if Moral Rights actually shows up and has some real-world
effect in a European court of law maybe a dozen times
in year, decade, whatever, then how much practical value
do they have? Aside from your fearing the fall of Europe.