Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

jonathon wrote:
> 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.

I think they must be bluffing. It's pretty clear that they have no right
to insist on this once they have released material under any of the CC
licenses, unless:

1) The original release was illegal (e.g. they didn't own all of it, so
their licensing the material under a CC license was misappropriation)

2) You have violated the terms of the CC license in question (e.g. used
an NC license commercially)

Of course, if someone politely asked me to take down material, saying
they didn't really understand the CC license or some such argument, I
would consider it *polite* to take it down, unless I've already invested
in it in some way.

One thing that isn't so clear to me is whether they could claim they
"accidentally" released the material.

Cheers,
Terry

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