Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On 19 Jul 2007 at 9:15, James Grimmelmann wrote:

> Andres Monroy-Hernandez wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > I have some questions:
> > 1. What do you think of the kid-friendly license?
> > 2. Do you know of other projects that let kids create their own
> > content and license it? 3. Are kids "allowed" to license their own
> > content?
> 
> They are, but they are also generally allowed to change their minds
> and "disaffirm" contracts.  I think that this means that they could
> ask to remove their creations from the site and de-license them.  What
> this does to the rights of other users who have released their own
> creations based on the original . . . no one is quite sure.
> 

For Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia (and probably a good part of 
the rest of Europe) the main rule is quite simple: minors are not 
capable of entering contracts on their own. A minor that has been 
given some money by its legal guardian may use that money and buy 
things but it's the other party (presumably an entity with full legal 
capabilities) who stands the risk of entering a contract with a minor 
and not making sure that the minor has been allowed to buy whatever 
it is the minor tries to buy. This protection of the minors interests 
is an on purpose deviation from the rule of "pacta sunt servanda" and 
it's upheld quite strictly by the courts. 

A minor may absolutely not, unless the legal guardian agrees to it 
(and in some cases not even then), give away his or her property. A 
minor in Sweden is therefore nor allowed to issue any kind of 
copyright license, open source/content or not. One needs to secure 
reliable evidence that proves that the legal guardian agrees to issue 
the license and this is very difficult to do on the net. 

In fact I think that it's a bad idea indeed to create a site directed 
specifically to minors offering them to issue copyright licenses. 
It's to much of a legal minefield.

It might be worth keeping in mind that it's not bad in anyway that 
the law protects minors from being conned, making bad decisions or 
from acting naively. It's a sign of a good society. That it creates 
some minor problems for the open source and open content communities 
is a price well worth to pay. 

/Peter Brink