Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

On Thu, 2007-12-04 at 08:29 -0400, drew Roberts wrote:

> So, just as a for instance, let's say you see a BY photo with a person in 
> it. 
> Should you feel safe to use it per the BY license, or do you need to see 
> the 
> model release forms as well to feel safe?

With the 1.0 licenses, you should feel safe. With the 2.x and 3.0
licenses, you should not feel safe at all.

The 1.0 licenses have a warranty by the licensor saying that you can
exercise the rights granted in the license, because the licensor has
cleared all the other rights (publicity, privacy, etc.).

             I. By offering the Work for public release under this
                License, Licensor represents and warrants that, to the
                best of Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry: 
                     I. Licensor has secured all rights in the Work
                        necessary to grant the license rights hereunder
                        and to permit the lawful exercise of the rights
                        granted hereunder without You having any
                        obligation to pay any royalties, compulsory
                        license fees, residuals or any other payments;
                    II. The Work does not infringe the copyright,
                        trademark, publicity rights, common law rights
                        or any other right of any third party or
                        constitute defamation, invasion of privacy or
                        other tortious injury to any third party. 

This language was dropped from the licenses during the 2.0 release
cycle, to make it easier for stupid people to publish works they didn't
have rights to. The main complainants were bloggers, who wanted to have
the cool Creative Commons badge on their blogs, but also wanted to copy
New York Times articles verbatim.

There was a plan to have an optional warranty that responsible people
could add if they bothered to clear the rights to the works they were
distributing, but this was lost somewhere. 

So: no, don't feel safe at all.

-Evan


________________________________________________________________________
Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.name/

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