Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>]

Terry Hancock skrev:
> How can the law possibly care who made the fence? Almost no one makes 
> their own fence wire.  Surely if you put up a fence, it's your fence, 
> not the fence-maker's fence?

In this case the "fence" is a piece of software and a such it's the 
property of its copyright holder. When A uses B's DRM software to create 
a DRM version of one of A's texts, A licenses the right to use B's 
"fence", there is no transfer of ownership.

> Likewise, if I applied TPM technology A, produced by "TPM-Corp" to my 
> file, then surely I am entitled to remove it at will? 

Yes, but not to crack it open...

> Likewise, I may 
> enter into an agreement to authorize others to remove it -- in this 
> case, as a condition for having been able to apply it in the first 
> place.  

You are not at liberty to allow third parties rights to TPM-Corp's 
property. A construction where TPM-Corp has entered an agreement with 
*you*, with the meaning that *they* must allow downstream users to crack 
open a fence that they (TPM-Corp) has applied would work. But in the 
situation where TPM-Corp has no agreement with you and their "fence" is 
applied because a downstream user A uses a service that they provides 
then you cannot give downstream user B permission to crack open 
TPM-Corp's fence. In this case TPM-Corp is outside the scope of the 
license, it's A that has violated the (present 2.5) license, not TPM-Corp.


/Peter Brink