Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Jonathon Blake <jonathon.blake AT gmail.com>]

Drew wrote:

> I give it to person A with a CC BY-SA license.
> I give it to person B with a standard copyright notice.
> That is the extent of my distribution of this particular work.

A total of _two_ copies of the material were distributed.

> Before getting to use it, person A loses their only copy.

> Two brancehs here:
> In the first, person A then dies. In the second, they live.

> One: Person A is dead. Person B learns of the license I gave person A.
>Can person B claim to have the BY-SA license?

No.  A party to a licence can not arbitrarily change the terms of the
licence.  Exception: If the granter of the licence did not have the
authority to grant the licence, then the licence _might_ be null and
void.

[By way of analogy.  The (c) of a movie is not renewed.  The (p) of a
movie is renewed.  Being a hotshot risk taker, you convert the movie
to video, and proceed to sell them.  Oops.  You get nailed by the (p)
holder, because you don't have permission to distribute the (p) part
of the video.]

[The more I read about (c) and (p) cases, the more I think that
distributing the same work under two or more licences is a very bad
idea.]

> Two: Person A lives. Can they get a copy from person B?

No.  The licence that person B has prohibits further distribution.
Exception: Person B relinquishes all rights to the material to Person
A.   If that happens, then Person A is under the same contractual
obligations as Person B. [IOW, Person B no longer has  copy of the
work, and person A is bound by standard copyright.]

> Does the license I gave apply to the copy.

From  strictly legal POV, distributing the same work under two or more
licences is going to result in a maze of legal issues.  In general,
moving from "standard copyright, all rights reserved" to a "free"
licence is going to be easier, than moving from a "free" licence to a
"standard copyright, all rights reserved" licence.

>If so, is B breaking the law by copying a work they have no right to copy,

Yes.

> while A is not breaking the law as they have a license from me?

Person A would be in violation of the law, if they had a copy of the
material that you licenced to B.

The thorny issue would be in proving that Person A had a copy of what
was distributed to person B.

Note:  I am not a lawyer.

xan

jonathon
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