Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Matt Burrows" <mburrows2 AT earthlink.net>]

To clarify the scenario below, the novel would be a joint work (assuming
this was the intention) and, therefore, either party could issue licenses
(e.g., for derivative works) so long as the licenses are non-exclusive and
there is an accounting to the other.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>
To: <lx AT pobox.com>; "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts"
<cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] (c) 2005 All of humanity


> If Alice and Bob both hold copyright on some work
> (the wrote a novel together, for example),
> then any derivative of that novel must get
> Alice and Bob's permission. Both.
>
> Assigning copyright to all humanity
> would be rather like having Alice,
> Bob, and the entire alphabet soup
> holding copyright on a work, and
> would require everyone's permission
> to create a derivative work.
>
> This is unlike Public Domain which
> requires No One's permission to create
> a derivative work.
>
> You can see "all of humanity" at work in something
> such as Linux, which is a rather massive collective
> work. Not all of humanity, but rather close.
> Linux acquires copyright "inertia" with every
> person who contributes to the project. And by
> inertia I mean that you have another person whose
> permission you would need before changing the
> GPL license to something that doesn't qualify as
> GPL version N+1.
>
> This is part of why adding new licenses to CC
> is problematic: because new licenses may not be
> backward compatible, and to upgrade an old license
> to a different CC license would require everyone's
> permission, which is hard to accomplish.
>
> If you could assign copyright to
> All of Humanity
> somehow, I think it would mean that you
> would need a few billion signatures to
> change the license or create a derivative
> of that work.
>
> I could be mistaken, though.
> I am not a lawyer.
> This is not legal advice.
>
> Greg London
>
> -- 
> Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
> http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/
> http://www.somerightsreserved.org
>
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