Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

s kemp wrote:
> I contribute musical compositions to an internet site that requires 
> agreeing to, among other Terms and Conditions, the following:
> 
> "MATERIALS POSTED BY VISITORS
> 
> BY POSTING, SUBMITTING, LINKING, UPLOADING OR OTHERWISE SENDING ANY 
> MATERIALS INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMAGES, AUDIO FILES, VIDEO FILES, 
> TEXT FILES, AND ALL WORKS OF AUTHORSHIP ("CONTRIBUTIONS") TO US OR TO 
> THE ****** WEB SITE, YOU WARRANT THAT YOU OWN ALL NECESSARY RIGHTS (OR 
> WARRANT THAT THE OWNER OF SUCH RIGHTS HAS EXPRESSLY GRANTED SUCH RIGHTS 
> TO YOU OR TO ******) TO POST, SUBMIT, LINK, UPLOAD, OR OTHERWISE SEND 
> ANY SUCH MATERIAL AND YOU ALSO GRANT TO ****** AND ITS AFFILIATES A 
> WORLDWIDE, PERPETUAL, IRREVOCABLE, ROYALTY-FREE, NON-EXCLUSIVE LICENSE 
> TO USE, COPY, PUBLISH, DISPLAY, PERFORM, AND DISTRIBUTE SUCH 
> CONTRIBUTION ON THE ****** WEBSITE OR ANY MUSIC RELATED WEBSITE OWNED BY 
> ****** OR ITS PARENT OR AFFILIATED COMPANIES."
> 
> After agreeing to this and subsequently uploading a song, a set of 
> Creative Commons licenses is presented in a pick list of options for 
> Creative Commons licensing (attribution, commercial use and so on)
> 
> My question is:
> 
> "Do the Creative Commons licenses actually protect my work after having 
> agreed to the Terms and Conditions clause above?"

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but, IMHO, you are
granting the license above to the owner of the website and its "parent
or affiliated companies". Visitors to the site who receive your work
however, will be using it subject to the CC license terms you picked.

Note in particular that you *must* grant a stronger license to the site
holder in most cases of "non-commercial" licensing, because the site
holder cannot host your material according to the NC terms (they are a
company, the site is commercial, etc).

The fact that CC licenses do not all grant sufficient rights to permit
internet web hosting of your material by commercial hosting companies,
especially if they are advertising-supported makes an explicit second
license for the site owner a "best practice" (necessary to eliminate
legal risks for the hosting company).

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com