Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Jonathan Mitchell <jonathanmitchell AT mac.com>]

The language of the generic licence is becomingly increasingly baroque.
Clause 4b now has a first sentence of 180 words! Isn¹t it possible to use
shorter, more comprehensible sentences? To me this reads like the sort of
statutory drafting we had in the eighteenth century. When Pascal wrote ŒJe
n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que  je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la
faire plus courte' (I've only made this letter longer than usual because I
didn't have the time to make it shorter), he was apologising, and quite
right too.

One sentence should equal one idea.

How about dealing with this issue by using definitions of Œauthor¹ and of
Œoriginal author¹ as follows:
"Author" means the owner of the copyright in the Work, who is the Licensor
unless otherwise stated.
"Original Author" means the person who created the Work, who is the Licensor
unless otherwise stated
The words 'unless otherwise stated' allow the licensor to state that
somebody else (for example, a sponsoring institution, or a wiki collective,
or for that matter "Nobody" or a pseudonym) is the creator/owner of
copyright.


Jonathan
--
Jonathan Mitchell QC

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