Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

Henri wrote:

> point of having ports of the 3.0 series instead of using the "New  
> Generic" with English as the governing language everywhere?

The "ports" of the CC licence address specific local issues that the US 
licence either ignores, or else are required for it to be legally binding.

The biggie, is that the US/generic licence is extremely fuzzy as to 
whether or not it is a contract.  The presence or absence of such a 
clause can be enough to invalidate the licence in _some_ jurisdictions. 
  The results of such invalidation be either "all rights reserved", or 
"public domain", or a limbo status between the two.

Obviously it would be nice to have a generic licence, that one could be 
assured would be valid worldwide. Due to the differences in how the 
local copyright laws are written, and the legal traditions of the 
different countries, such a licence is very unlikely to be written. 
[Look at the difference between the Roman Dutch Law, Code Napoleon, and 
British Common Law, and US Case Law legal traditions --- especially in 
copyrightable material and protections.  The Netherlands: Sweat equity 
counts.  France: Moral rights count, US: Neither sweat equity nor moral 
rights have any meaning.]

xan

jonathon