Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Jim Sowers wrote:
> 2. The "language lawyers write in" as you put it, is very often
> different because they choose to write that way, not because it makes
> a legal difference. Most contracts are between non-lawyers -- thus,
> the language is expected to be plain and clear. Of course, certain
> things, like indemnification, will always be more legally technical.
> [... and similar ideas snipped...]

I disagree. I think jargon is inevitable whenever precision is required.

Consider, for example, three different meanings of the word "object":

1) In *computer science* an "object" most likely refers to "an aggregate
data type, representing both finer data elements and associated code to
manipulate them"

2) In *astronomy* an "object" is "a physical entity, usually a star or
planet that appears in a predictable place in the sky for observation" /
"the thing you are trying to observe"

3) In *law* an "object" is probably "a goal or purpose of an agreement"

4) In "plain English", the word "object" most likely means "a tangible
thing"

and so on.

And that's a simple, fairly loosely defined jargon word, which happens
to correspond to an even more general word in "plain English".

In the interest of "speaking in plain English", I once told a fellow
astronomer that a particular star in our observation list was "faster"
than another one.  I've since forgotten which particular meaning I had
intended, but I realized after registering his confusion that it
could've been any one of the following:

1) "this star has a higher absolute radial velocity"
2) "this star has a higher rate of rotation"
3) "this star has a shorter period of radial velocity variability"
4) "this star has a higher amplitude of radial velocity variability"

and there are still more possibilities, had we not both known from
context that we were talking about absorption spectroscopy
measurements.  Clarity would've been much better served by me using
correct astronomical jargon, instead of "plain English".

Now, I am not a lawyer, but I feel pretty confident that the same sort
of situation exists in legal terminology.

Surely it is impossible to be precise about what you mean in a legal
agreement without using legal jargon?

Sometimes, "plain English" isn't plain enough.  ;-)

OTOH, I agree that calling the "deed" the "human readable" version is
unnecessary and potentially insulting. The truth is that this term was
lifted from computer science, and refers to an analogy between "source"
and "binary" (the source being "human readable", and the binary being
"machine readable").  Of course, the real "machine readable" version of
the CC licenses is the RDF version.  However, while this makes sense to
programmers, they aren't really the principle target audience of CC
licenses.

A better practice would probably be to call it a "summary" or a
"non-technical summary".

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com