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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Creative Commons licenses cause a problem

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Nancy Ide <ide AT cs.vassar.edu>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Creative Commons licenses cause a problem
  • Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 08:48:44 -0400


On Jun 5, 2006, at 6:15 PM, Peter Brink wrote:
I really don't understand your problem. Why would your data-mining
project violate anyones copyright? What is your infringement case, that
is how do you think you would violate the copyright of the works you
gather statistics from?


This is the legal advice from the lawyers at the University of Pennsylvania's Linguistic Data Consortium, which distributes the ANC. We are re-distributing the texts, with restrictions for commercial users (see our licenses at http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Projects/ANC/ ), and this apparently would violate the share-alike and non-commercial strictures. Share-alike says we have to allow them to re-distribute themselves, and we don't let commercial users do so (although research users can).

But I agree with you. What we do with the texts isn't going to violate any copyright laws *in spirit*, and if we went to court over it we may even win. But my guess is the UPenn lawyers want to avoid even the remote possibility of a lawsuit, whether or not we have a case.

What does this group think? By downloading a CC licensed text from the web, adding some linguistic info to it and re-distributing it for research use, with strong strictures on re-publication (e.g., putting a whole text out on the web again), do we violate the CC license? I would like to hear from someone who is from CC on this, because if it were felt we could use CC licensed texts that specify share-alike and non-commercial, we'd be in very good shape.

I think it is clear that what the CC licenses intend to say about use of the materials is that (a) if a text is re-distributed it has to be done under the same terms; and (b) there should be no commercial use of the materials, i.e., re-publishing them for profit etc. We are not doing that, but it is a gray area as to whether using the text to gather statistics about language use and then publishing a dictionary on that basis is a commercial use. Common sense says it is not a violation, but common sense and the law (especially in this new and murky area) are not always in synch.

Any thoughts on this issue would be welcome.

Thanks,
Nancy Ide



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