Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Jessica Coates" <j2.coates AT qut.edu.au>]

Rather belatedly, some comments from CC-AU on the v3.0 proposal, to add to the existing discussion:

 

1. Moral rights

We strongly support the incorporation of a moral rights icon in the Commons Deed. This will ensure that both authors and users are fully informed of their rights and responsibilities under the licences.

 

We’d also be interested in people's views on the possibility of having a question regarding moral rights on the 'choose licence' page, for at least some jurisdictions (eg where moral rights can be waived, or have to be actively asserted). It would increase the number of licence variations, but it would also reduce criticism that CC steals artists' moral rights, whilst still giving people the choice to make their material even less restricted (where the law allows).

 

2. Glossary

As part of the disambiguation strategy (great name) we'd also like to propose that a 'glossary page' (or something equivalent) be set up on the CC site. This could contain short, non-legal descriptions of some of the technical terms that surround Creative Commons licences (eg fair use, moral rights).

 

Uses of these terms (eg in the Commons Deed) could then be linked to these definitions. This would provide a lot of assistance for people wanting to know, for example, what 'Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above' means.

 

The descriptions would, of course, not be able to be complete (listing all the fair use rights for all countries would be impractical) but could at least give people a basic understanding of what these terms mean, and perhaps give them an idea how to find out more.

 

Thoughts?

 

Jessica Coates