Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Itai Be'erli skrev:
> You wrote: "There is unfortunately no good online text explaining the 
> concept that I can point you to, but any decent text book on copyright law 
> covers the subject." Could you please recommend me a decent text book on 
> copyright law? It should preferrably be easily understood by laypeople (i.e. 
> people without legal training), it should cover well the topic of open 
> source, copyleft and free licenses, it should be slender enough to be 
> humanly readable within a small percentage of single lifespan of a normal 
> human-being, and be written in either English or Hebrew (if it's 
> exceptionally well-written, it can be in French or German, as well).

Since you mentioned Hebrew, why not take a look at the CC-Israels 
website (http://creativecommons.org.il/)? The Haifa Center of Law & 
Technology's site may also include some info that might be of value to 
you (http://law.haifa.ac.il/techlaw/techlaw_index.asp?lang=eng). In 
particular check the information about courses in IP law, such webpages 
very commonly include references to literature.

Books in English that deal with IP law are (fairly obviously) looking at 
IP law from an Anglo-American perspective, that might (or might not) 
suit your needs. I would recommend "Intellectual Property: Patents, 
Copyrights, Trademarks and Allied Rights" by W.R. Cornish and David 
Llewelyn. It's neither slender, doesn't cover open source (save for one 
sentence or so) and it is requires a fair deal from it's reader but it's 
the best text (in English) on the subject that I have, so far, read. 
See 
(http://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/details?prodid=21262&unitid=21262&search=&format=L&publisher=all) 
for more info on the book.

Books in German and French (really for the legal scientist though):
* Ulmer, Eugen, Urheber- und Verlagsrecht, 3 u., Springer-Verlag, 
Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1980.
* Schricker, Gerard, m.fl., Urheberrecht, Kommentar, C.M. Beck’sche 
Verlagsbuchhandlung, München, 1999.
* Nordeman W, Vinck K & Herlin P, Urheberrecht und zum 
Urheberrechtsgesetz und zum Urheberrechtswahmehmungsgesetz, 8 u., Verlag 
W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln.
* Shack, Haimo, Urheber- und Urhebervertragsrecht, 3 u., Mohr Siebeck, 
Tübingen, 2005.
* Bertrand, André, Le droit d’auteur et les droits voisins, 2 u., 
Dalloz, Paris, 1999.

The German "Institut für Rechtsfragen der Freien und Open Source 
Software" (http://www.ifross.de/) might also be of interest to you. You 
could also check out the site of the French open source license CeCILL 
(http://www.cecill.info/).

There's also a reading list on CC's Wiki 
(http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Reading_list).

See also a very recent thread on CC-Community about "[r]esources on the 
history of the copyleft movement..." 
(https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-community/2007-March/001638.html)

/Peter Brink