Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Henri Sivonen <hsivonen AT iki.fi>]

On Oct 7, 2006, at 16:25, Peter Brink wrote:

> There are several reasons why "localized" licenses is a must:
>
> 1) There may be formal requirements for copyright contracts (or indeed
> contracts as such) in certain jurisdictions (both France and  
> Germany for
> example has such rules IRRC) that must be met or else the license  
> fails
> to come into force.

Don't France and Germany have Freedom of Agreement? If the  
prospective licensee claims that the license is not valid, the joke  
is on him, because he doesn't get to exercise any rights under the  
license.

> 3) Creators will feel safer when using a license written in their own
> language.

What about licensees? How do I know what the terms for a photo  
licensed under e.g. a Dutch license are if the license is a port and  
not a mere translation?

> 4) It's necessary to be able to assure creators that the license is
> enforceable.

That hasn't been a real problem with Free Software.

> Resolutions (which are
> directly binding legal instruments) and directives (which are binding
> legal instruments that must be implemented nationally) are written in
> French, translated to German and then to English. All the other 23
> translations are based on those three versions.

FWIW, I think the equivalence of EU translations is even more of an  
illusion than the GPL working in Europe. I also think the EU would be  
better off if we had one set of binding directives in English, but  
that's off-topic for this list.

> In fact the entire Open Source is based on the illusion that the GPL
> would work the same way in the U.S. and (for example Sweden) - it  
> won't.

It has worked in Germany. It might not work in *exactly* the same way  
as in the U.S., but don't you have Freedom of Agreement in Sweden (as  
in Finland--usually Finnish legal concepts are inherited from Sweden  
anyway)? With Freedom of Agreement, the form (including the language)  
of the agreement is not a problem if the parties agree to it, and you  
have to accept the form of the GPL in order to be licensed to  
exercise the rights granted by the GPL.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen AT iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/