Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>]

Donnie to Z skrev:
> I live in Canada, have a novel coming out soon, and am considering making it 
> available as a free download.  Does choosing a Canadian licence put my 
> rights at risk in other countries (especially the US)?

Your rights as a creator are guaranteed in foreign countries by 
international agreements, such as the Berne Convention (BC) and TRIPS. 
Each member nation of the BC agrees to grant foreign copyright holders a 
minimum set of rights which is laid out in the convention (it is in fact 
possible to grant native copyright holders less rights than foreign 
under the BC but I don't know of any such case). In fact the license 
does not affect _your rights_ at all. You can, for example, license your 
work in other ways as well if you wish.

What you do when you issue a CC license is to grant users of your works 
some rights they would otherwise not have. As Dana pointed out the 
license is meant to be enforceable worldwide. It might not have exactly 
the same effect, i.e. the grants may work somewhat differently from 
jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it's (as far as we know) enforceable 
world wide.

/Peter Brink