Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Friday 26 January 2007 03:13 pm, Peter Brink wrote:
> drew Roberts skrev:
>  > So, taking this all into consideration, does this mean you disagree
>  > with Mia? Or do you agree with her and I am too dim or too ignorant at
>  > this point to see it?
>
> You are neither dim nor ignorant.
>
> Mia’s position seems to be that since the license is non-exclusive, the
> implication (and intention of the license) must be that the terms of the
> license only applies to such copies that includes an explicit license
> statement. 

I don't follow this logic. I can offer my work as BY-SA and if someone does 
not want to deal with the SA aspects, I can offer them a different license on 
terms to be agreed upon. This would be a case of non exclusive licenses on 
the work that would not force us to hold the position that the license is 
only for copies of the work to which the BY-SA license is attached or that 
come from a copy to which the BY-SA license is attached.

I am not saying that I want Mia to be wrong. I think her being right would do 
a lot to open business opportunities for me. I just wonder why we need to 
leave the ambiguity in the license by speaking of the work rather than 
mentioning the instance of the work and all works stemming from that 
instance.

> I can understand how she comes to this conclusion. On the 
> other hand the language of the license explicitly states that the terms
> of the license apply to the work as such and the legal scope of
> protection afforded to a work includes all its copies. 
>
> In the end it becomes a matter of interpretation. I think that most
> civil law courts would, mainly because of the (largely non-codified)
> rule that an author never yields more rights than he has explicitly
> agreed to, come to the conclusion that since the author has reserved the
> right to offer other copies of the work under other terms (including
> ARR), it’s up to the licensee to prove that he has had the right to use
> the work in the way he has done. If the licensee cannot prove that the
> copy he has been using includes an explicit license statement then he
> has been infringing the author’s copyright. The burden of proof thus
> lies on the licensee. 
>
> The end result is the same as Mia's – but not of (exactly) the same
> reason. I'm aware of that I seemed to reach a different conclusion a
> week or two ago, but I was a wee bit to quick with my conclusions at
> that point.
>
>
> /Peter Brink
>
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