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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] When to use unported?

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Dana Powers" <dana.powers AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] When to use unported?
  • Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:24:43 -0800

Jurisdictional "ports" are legal translations aimed at addressing differences in local laws not necessarily language barriers.  The unported license uses a number of international treaties, instead of any particular jdx's laws, so it should be legally understandable in most countries although it may, of course, need to be literally translated.  Sometimes a jdx port is itself literally translated into multiple languages (Canada for example), but it isn't frequent.  On top of the legal text rests a layer of "human readable" text (the deed) which is usually translated into many languages.

CC licenses have multiple audiences:

The choice of legal code should be made with an eye towards the legal audience: lawyers and judges.  Are the lawyers/judges/etc who are most likely to read, scrutinize, and enforce your license going to be more familiar with the laws of a particular jurisdiction?  If so, thats the jurisdiction you should use (this is almost certainly the country you're from).

The human readable code is what most non-lawyers will interact with, so you might link directly to a deed translation for the license you chose that best fits that part of your intended audience.  At the top of the human readable deeds are links to lots of literal translations: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/br/deed.en_US , for example, is an english translation of the Brazilian CC-ND 2.5 deed.  Notice that if you click the link for Legal Code at the bottom it will still be in Portuguese.  Even if you don't link to a particular translation of the human readable deed, the user should be able to recognize the list of translations at the top and select one in their preferred language (I'm unsure if the webserver does any magic language negotiation when someone links to the default page).

Well anyway, that is the basics.  The unported license should hopefully be understandable to lawyers in countries that are members of TRIPS and/or Berne (that includes the U.S.), although it probably won't be as familiar as their home jdx port.

Best,
Dana

On 2/27/07, Henri Sivonen < hsivonen AT iki.fi> wrote:
Is there a reason why a US-based licensor shouldn't use an Unported
license? If Unported is supposed to work, why are ported English-
language licenses needed at all?

Should people who publish in English but who are based in a country
whose ported CC licenses are not written in English use an Unported
license?

Should international collaborative projects headquartered in the US
make a policy to use an Unported license considering that the
licensors are spread throughout the world?

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen AT iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/


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  • Re: [cc-licenses] When to use unported?, Dana Powers, 03/10/2007

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