Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Joachim Durchholz <jo AT durchholz.org>]

Erik Moeller schrieb:
> b) under moral rights jurisdictions, it's impossible to relinquish
> that right (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights )

In Germany, it's explicitly possible to relinquish that right by 
publishing anonymously. (Which might be an option for the original 
poster, too.)

The snag is that republishing such a work is risky. Copyright for 
anonymous works terminates earlier than that for non-anonymous works.
Now if somebody releases anonymously, waits until the copyright period 
is over, he may come forth later, claim ownership of the work and start 
to collect royalties for years of unlicensed use.
In the case of CC-!ND, he may come forth later, claim that somebody else 
removed the ND part of the license, and start to collect royalties, too.

So while it is indeed generous to actively waive the BY rights, it's 
impractical as long as anonymous works have a shorter deadline than 
those with an author. (I really don't understand that. If 10 years 
aren't enough to recover the investment into a work, it's probably not 
useful enough to the general public. But that's a different can of 
worms, of course.)

I'm not sure how much of that actually went into CC's decision, it's 
just the particular situation over here in Germany.


Note to the OP: I'd recommend putting the author's name into the image's 
metadata and leave it at that. You could promise not to sue over not 
being named as an author, and let the creators of derivative works 
decide whether they'll trust you (and, possibly, your heirs after your 
death) to rely on that word.
It's essentially the same situation as when you published the work under 
a non-BY license, at least here in Germany...

Regards,
Jo