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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Pete Rabjohns <info AT theprojekt.co.uk>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Lawyers aren't humans
  • Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 23:25:15 +0000


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Hi Jim

I agree.

In my field, I'm working with kids - kids who are also musicians, composers, film-makers, artists, authors, computer game designers etc....Try involving a teenager in the depth of the discussion you're currently having! But Creative Commons licensing is about them too - after all, Mozart was a child prodigy, and many of his major works were written before he was what we currently consider an adult to be. What if he was alive now, and publishing on the internet?

Plain English is one concern, but at what stage of development? What may be clear to young people at the age of 21, may still be unintelligible to a kick-ass musician of 16. (and I've got kick-ass musicians and film-makers of 14 in my world - they need the promotion and protection that Creative Commons licensing can give them.

I'm currently working on a presentation to some young people I'm about to work with about Creative Commons licensing because they don't understand it. Somehow or other they think it is removing their rights - and I now have to convince them that it is enhancing their (and their audience's) rights, and allowing viral promotion to an international audience, legally.

If the words or concepts were more obvious, maybe I wouldn't have to spend valuable time doing this?

Or is the root problem the English language itself? Take the US and the UK - "two nations divided by a common language" - few other languages are open to such (mis-)interpretation. Let's say what we mean as well as meaning what we say...

The hell with lawyers anyway - this is a people's movement - if it's important to me, then it's just as important to my little brother.



Regards

*Pete Rabjohns*
E-mail: info AT theprojekt.co.uk <mailto:info AT theprojekt.co.uk>

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Jim Sowers wrote:
Hi Terry,

You give good examples #1 and #2. However, your examples involve people in a particular discipline talking to each other, e.g. computer scientists (of which I am also one), astronomers, etc. Example #3 is a straw man in my opinion--it is not a legal definition, just another of the many definitions for that word, and you have demonstrated that you don't need to be a lawyer to understand the concept.

These Creative Commons licenses are going to be between, in most situations, two non-lawyers. This is a major difference from the examples you give. You could have a store owner entering a CC license with a musician; a graphic artist entering a CC license with a car dealer, etc. The parties involved have "plain English" as their lingua franca.

This is the very point of the plain English movement in this country and elsewhere in the legal context -- that most of the language in contracts should be readable by non-lawyers; that words take on their normal meaning, and if they don't, that can be explained clearly (just as you did in explaining the special uses below).
The point is not that there are never special terms in the law, but rather that contracts can be written with much less jargon than they currently are. A reasonably intelligent person should be able to read well-written contract and be able to the bulk of it. You could not say the same about someone reading a treatise on astronomy, or a medical procedure, or a sort routine for a doubly-linked list.

Thus, most of the language in the promotional material for CC talks about people being able to license things without needing a lawyer.

Again, I'm not suggesting that everyone can will be able to read a CC license and understand all of it. But I am a big advocate of openness: open source, no-DRM, and open access to legal contracts that are becoming pervasive and non-optional for many. Thus, making the actual contract as "plain" and jargon-free should be a goal. Unlike science writers, who use an economy of words to be precise (I used to work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), lawyers use an excess of words, many of which are superfluous. This was the very reason that Prof. Wydick was compelled to write his article/book. http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/wydick.shtml

CC takes the extraordinary step of writing a summary, for which I commend it. Remember, however, all the websites to which you are bound by a Privacy Policy; or all the Terms of Service and User Agreements that you have checked off without reading. Do you think you think those agreements are binding on you, even though you are not a lawyer? The answer is yes, so, I argue that it is in your best interest to support the "plain English" effort so that these contracts will be as readable/accessible as possible to the rare non-lawyer who wants to read them.

All the best,

Jim


On 11/22/06, *Terry Hancock* <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com <mailto:hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>> wrote:

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
<mailto:hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com>)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com

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