Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] PROCEDURAL SUGGESTION

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Andres Guadamuz <a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] PROCEDURAL SUGGESTION
  • Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:47:42 +0100

MJ Ray wrote:


5. Better anti-TPM language already exists in the CC-Scotland drafts,
but an equivalent solution in the treaty-style phrasing of the generic
licences could be acceptable too.


MJ,

I haven't been following the debate closely, but this caught my eye. As one of the members of the CC-Scotland team, I can confirm unofficially that the reason why the language in the Scottish license contains intent is because of peculiarities of UK's copyright legislation. I have emailed Jonathan Mitchell (who was the person who drafted the licence), so I will have to wait for confirmation on this, but if my memory serves me well, this had to be done to comply with the idiosyncratically drafted WCD implementation into UK law.

If you read the legislation, it is easy to see why the CC-Scotland licence needed to include intent. Section 296ZA of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act reads:

"This section applies where -
(a) effective technological measures have been applied to a copyright work other than a computer program; and
(b) a person (B) does anything which circumvents those measures knowing, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he is pursuing that objective."

As you can see, the legal requirement is not only that an effective TPM has been circumvented, but that it was done with intent, "knowing" that it was pursuing circumvention. AFAIK, the reasoning behind this provision is to stop unwilling infringement.

Personally, I don't see much sense in exporting this peculiarity in UK law to the rest of the world.

Regards,

Andres

--
Andres Guadamuz
AHRC Research Centre for Studies in
Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Old College, South Bridge
Edinburgh EH8 9YL

Tel: 44 (0)131 6509699
Fax: 44 (0)131 6506317
a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrb/
http://technollama.blogspot.com/





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page