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cc-licenses - Re: Draft License 2.5 - Now open for discussion

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Draft License 2.5 - Now open for discussion
  • Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:05:14 +0200

Matt Burrows skrev:
[ Caps removed by me...]
[ snip ]

Note - I dont consider the above potential abuse to be a significant issue
here. There are other ways for abuse already inherent in the license format
itself - eg, it does not require a signature, a party could claim they did
not have an attorney review the license and, therefore, did not fully
consent to its terms, the license was "take it or leave it" and not freely
negotiated, etc. These are all potential outs which we live with for the
sake of practicality and efficiency.


The form of the contract is not that much of a problem. An licensee who argued along those lines would get himself sued (or worse) for copyright infringement... It's reasonable to assume that the general public is aware of that a copyrighted work cannot be copied, distributed or transformed without proper permission. GPL and CC's licenses are beneficial contracts, the copyright holder freely yields some of his rights, provided that the user abides by certain rules. The constraints placed on the user cannot be said to be non-equitable and the user can hardly claim that he is unaware of that copyrighted works cannot be freely used without proper permission. A party who makes use of a copyrighted work, as permitted by a Open Source or Open Content license, and then violates the terms of the license would therefore hardly be able to defend itself by claiming that the terms of the contract are non-equitable, nor could he claim to be free to choose what terms to agree too just because it's a adhesion contract. If a licensee makes use of a licensed work in violation of the terms of the license, he is in breach of the contract and, as a result, also infringing upon the copyright of the licensed work. There's no easy way out.


/Peter Brink





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