Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT bad.dynu.ca>]

On Wed, 2005-17-08 at 14:04 +0700, Stephanie Rieger wrote:

>      1. is sampling NOT allowed unless you have a sampling license?

No. All of the Creative Commons licenses, except those that include the
"NoDerivs" (no derivative works) license element, allow taking bits and
pieces of the work and re-mixing them into new works. There may be other
requirements on the derivative work, but all non-NoDerivs licenses allow
it.

>      1.  In cropping the taxi portion of the jpg, this copy is lost
>         which would seem to contradict the baseline right “to keep any
>         copyright notice intact on all copies of your work;” Is this
>         in fact a contradiction of this baseline right? Would it be
>         sufficient for the licensee to reproduce the “Creative
>         Commons, some rights reserved” + the creator’s URL + URI to,
>         in effect, match the copyright notice that was removed?

The licensee must include the following in some "reasonable" way:

      * copyright notice
      * licensor's name
      * title of the work
      * licensor-provided copyright info URI (see below)
      * change information
      * license notification

Those are listed out in the legal code of the licenses. Note for
Creative Commons people: maybe it would be better to have that list, or
something like it, on the Commons Deed, rather than just "You must
attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor." I
agree, this is confusing language.

The licensor-provided copyright info URI is _only_ required if it really
has copyright information on it. If it's just self-promotion, the
licensee doesn't have to include it!

The "keep intact" clause is replicated from other Open Source licenses;
although it's troubling just for the reason you suggest, I think the
practise with Open Source software is that the copyright notice can be
_moved_ but not _removed_.

> We are starting a new company that will be creating (and hopefully
> selling) Creative Commons licensed, shareable content.

You should hire competent legal counsel who can advise you about this
and other issues. If you try to build a business on legal advice you got
from a mailing list, you are doomed to lose.

> In fact, I’ve yet to find anyone (i.e. an author or licensor) that
> actually specifies a manner of attribution even though the Creative
> Commons Deeds all state “You must attribute the work in the manner
> specified by the author or licensor.” 

I believe that's referring to the legal code text. The licensor or
author has specified the manner by using the Creative Commons licenses.

> Is anyone at Creative Commons working on attribution related FAQs –
> even just general guidelines for licensees such as “if no specific
> method of attribution is specified, here is a list of commonly
> acceptable methods for print, web etc..….”, maybe accompanied with a
> simple checklist i.e. “did you remember to link to the license?”

AFAIK, no. Why don't we get something started here:

        http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Attribution
        
?

~Evan

-- 
Evan Prodromou
evan AT bad.dynu.ca
"By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
of on the same terms." -- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"