Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mia Garlick <mia AT creativecommons.org>]

one minor clarification: while the CC licenses are not revocable with  
respect to those people who have already accepted the work under the  
license, the license expressly reserves to the licensor to withdraw  
offering the work under the license at any time.  thus, it is  
possible to remove content.  but i agree with james that it would be  
useful to know the legal basis on which you are requested not to  
mention a specific website.

On Dec 8, 2006, at 3:31 PM, James Grimmelmann wrote:

> jonathon wrote:
> > All:
> >
> > I received a very polite, informal, "cease and desist" letter.
> >
> > Basically, the sender wants all of my material that mentions a  
> > specific
> > website to be removed from public distribution.  I've removed the
> > relevant material from my website.
> >
> > One of the points they want, is assurance that the material will
> > not be redistributed by third parties.
> >
> > My understanding is that they are perfectly willing to go to court  
> > over
> > this. The judge will issue a ruling in their favour. That judgement
> > will, in theory, trump the CC licence. I don't see any point going to
> > court, knowing that the best case scenario for me, is that I lose. A
> > good faith effort, merely reduces the amount of damages can be  
> > awarded
> > against me.
> >
> > All of the affected material was distributed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
> > license.
> >
> > I've gone thru that licence, and can't find a way to prevent further
> > distribution of the offending material. Have I missed something?
>
> The following is not legal advice . . .
>
> In general no, a CC license is not revocable.  You cannot revoke your
> grant of permission to your licensees to distribute the material you
> licensed to them.  The sender of the C&D can't reasonably ask you to
> stop the distribution because you probably have no power to stop it.
> This is not to say, however, that the sender might not have the
> ability/right to stop that distribution him- or her-self.
>
> It would be useful to know on what basis the letter demands that this
> material be removed.  Is it a matter of copyright infringement, or
> something else?
>
> James
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