Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Peter,

first let me thank you for your time and patience.

If am am at all being a pain, it is not that I want to eb a pain, but that I 
want to wrap my head around this and something is not sitting right yet.

On Sunday 28 January 2007 11:57 am, Peter Brink wrote:
> drew Roberts skrev:
>  > 1. Definitions
>  >
>  > e. "Work" means the copyrightable work of authorship offered under the
>  > terms of this License.

In your explanation below, you do not actaully adress this point. Point 3 
just 
below grants me a license to the work as defined in point 1.e. above.

Is there more than one copyrightable work of authorship in this discussion, 
each with a different license, or is there only one copyrightable work of 
authorship and that one has more than one license?
>  >
>  > 3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License,
>  > Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive,
>  > perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to
>  > exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:
>  >
>  > As much as I would like the only to the "tagged" copy theory to be
>  > correct, please explain in relation to the actual language of the
>  > license itself.
>  >
>  > Unless the two copies are different copyrightable works of authorship,
>  > how can you not choose whichever license you want for whichever copy
>  > of the work you desire?
>
> As you know the license is non-exclusive. 

I know this, but I don't think it necessarily raises the issues that everyone 
seems to think it does.

For instance:

"Someone touched their candle to mine,
And brought me out of my darkness."

If I recall correctly, this is a tiny poem I wrote back in my high school 
days.

Right here and now, I offer to you and anyone else on this list under:

CC BY-SA
CC BY-NC
CC BY-ND

or I could do this:

 "Someone touched their candle to mine,
And brought me out of my darkness." CC BY-SA

"Someone touched their candle to mine,
And brought me out of my darkness." CC BY-NC

"Someone touched their candle to mine,
And brought me out of my darkness." CC BY-ND

You or someone else may want a specific license for a specific reason. On 
identical copies of the work.

Why does the license being non-exclusive necessarily imply more than this?

> The copyright holder has 
> reserved the right to offer the work under other licenses as well.
> Assume that A publishes a book and reserves all rights. Then later he
> publishes the same text as a pdf-file under CC-BY-SA. How shall we
> interpret the meaning of art. 3 in this case? How would a court approach
> the problem?
>
> The entire issue boils down to a matter of contract interpretation. I’m
> not overly familiar with how that is done in the US but in a civil law
> jurisdiction I would suggest that a court might reason as follows. There
> is a strong presumption in civil law jurisdictions against far reaching
> interpretations of copyright contracts and in favour of letting the
> author keep as much as possible of his rights. In the case of A and his
> book, A has not offered the work in _that form_ under a CC license. His
> intention seems to be that the book is strictly ARR. It’s only later
> that he offers the work, in another form, under a CC-BY-SA license. I
> would suggest that a civil law court in this situation would interpret
> “work” restrictively and only take it to mean that particular form of
> the work which has explicitly been offered (by attaching the terms of
> the license to the work) under the license. This tendency would quite
> likely be reinforced by the fact that the CC license would most likely
> be seen by a civil law court as a beneficial grant of enjoyment, 

Could you explain to me a beneficial grant of enjoyment? For instance, it is 
not beyond the realm of possibility that I might approach an author and offer 
them a sum of money to put a work of theirs under a CC license that I 
designate. If we reach an agreement and I pay the sum agreed upon and the 
author puts the work under the license I name, is this still a beneficial 
grant of enjoyment?

If I offer a work of my own for five dollars with an ARR or for ten thousand 
dollars with a BY-SA license and someone buys a copy from me for ten thousand 
dollars with the BY-SA license,  is this still a beneficial grant of 
enjoyment?

> and 
> when interpreting such grants a court will base it’s interpretation on
> the will of the benefactor and not on what the beneficiary (the receiver
> of the benefit) would reasonably believe the grant to mean.
>
> So (IMO) the end result is that a civil law court would interpret the
> license _against_ its language and limit the scope of the license to the
> specific form of the work which has explicitly been offered under the
> license.

So, how far overboard can the author go in their interpretation? If I release 
a bunch of my works BY-SA and people start selling them and making bundles of 
money, can I sue them for not sharing the profits with me and claim that I 
thought that was what share alike means?

Also, doesn't this view pu a serious kink in CC's desire to have streamlined 
licensing? Is it safe to use a CC work under any CC license withoug entering 
into actual negotiations with the copyright holders and coming to some actual 
meeting of the minds? (If that concept applies in other places, if not, is 
there something roughly similar?)
>
>
> /Peter Brink

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
National Novel Writing Month
Sayings (Winner 2006)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954