Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Tuesday 29 March 2005 11:12 am, Peter Brink wrote:
> Greg London skrev:
> > Oh for cripes sake. Software patents, heinous as they are, are manadatory
> > law. The GNU-GPL licenses rights to its works as long as no one uses a
> > software patent to create a proprietary version of the work.
> > If someone secures a software patent, they do not have the right to
> > use GNU-GPL code to do so.
> >
> > So, could you just once not talk about Moral Rights as if they
> > were the holy grail or some such thing?
>
> I'm merely stating facts. The fact is that the rule which regulates
> moral rights in the Swedish Copyright Act is a mandatory rule, a rule
> which overrules the "freedom of contract" that we have in Sweden.
> Contracting parties are not allowed to circumvent, suppress or alter
> mandatory rules. Live with it.
>
> > What Drew is proposing is not that outlandish, and may even
> > be possible to accomplish within a simple license.
>
> You cannot make such a contract fully valid in Sweden, and AFAIK you'll
> get into trouble elsewhere in Europe as well. So - no it may not be
> accomplished by a "simple license".
>
> > "stain reputation" my arse.
>
> I really don't think it's in CC interest to be associated with a license
> which might be suspected of trying to trick people into believing they
> have given up one of their rights.
>
> Whether you like it or not moral rights (and copyright itself) are
> considered to be a human right in Europe. That is a fact. In fact, the
> notion of moral rights as such can be said to be at the very heart of
> the (European) concept of copyright. To quote Jean Le Chapelier's
> (1754-94) comment on the French copyright act of 1793: "Le plus sacrée,
> la plus légitime, la plus inattaquable et, si je puis parler ansi, le
> plus personelle de toutes les propiétés, est l'ouvrage, fruit de la
> pensée d'un écrivian; cependent c'est une propriéte d'un gengre tout
> différent des autres propriétés." (Sterling, J.A.L., World copyright
> law, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 1999, 80.07 p. 1003)
>
> European copyright law concerns itself with the creator and fruits of
> his creative effort. That is why the European copyright laws have built
> a wall around the moral rights - to protect the creator against anyone
> who might try and alienate him from his work. A license such as has been
> suggested here runs a real risk of being seen as trying to do just that
> which the law is designed to prevent.
>
> /Peter Brink
>
OK, and so if someone from the other side really did not want to play in a 
game where he was licensing his works for free (gratis) and for free use 
(libre) where someone else had the ability to invoke these rights, he would 
need to somehow restrict his work to use only outside such countries.

Perhaps like book authors will sell the north american rights to some person. 
and the european rights to another. That is how the game is sometimes played, 
is it not?

So I grant the North American rights and not the European rights (which I 
retain for myself) and my work cannot be used in Europe?

I am not trying to remove your rights from you, just saying I don't want to 
play where those rules apply and so don't use my work if they do. (New idea.)

I am not really saying this, only as a point of discussion.

Would Europe allow a foreign author of a work publishes outside of Europe to 
restrict distribution to/within Europe in such a way?

all the best,

drew