Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Sunday 30 September 2007 11:15 am, Rob Myers wrote:
> Prodromos Tsiavos wrote:
> > Jonathon wrote:
> >> Copyright, or even enforcement of copyright is not the issue.  The
> >> major issue is whether or not Virgin should have had model releases or
> >> not.
> >
> > I totally agree. However, the point I m trying to make relates to the
> > allegation of the claimant that he was misinformed regarding the meaning
> > of the term 'commercial'
> >
> > "to adequately educate and warn him . of the meaning of commercial use
> > and the ramifications and effects of entering into a license allowing
> > such use." http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680
> >
> > All I m saying is
> >
> > (a) that the more we are going to have non-professional creators, the
> > more we will have to deal with legal issues that normally would have been
> > issues involving only professionals.
> > (b) the practice of introducing terms [e.g. commercial/ noncommercial]
> > that are not recognized or clearly defined by Copyright or other national
> > laws is prone to cause legal disputes
> >
> >> Model releases are irrelevant to copyright law.
> >> A future CC license that contains a "model release" clause would, by
> >> definition, be incompatible with prior licenses.  None the less,
> >> material under existing licenses could be converted to a future
> >> license, by a future user, despite that incompatibility.
> >
> > IMHO the "model release clause" should be in included in the next version
> > of the CC licences, though I m not sure how the incompatibility issue
> > would be resolved.
>
> If a model release warning was included that just clarified that such
> issues exist, like with Moral Rights, this wouldn't be a compatibility
> issue. If the licence placed stronger constraints on the user than exist
> in law genrerally then this would be both a compatibility issue and a
> very bad idea.
>
> So IMHO model release *requirements* should *not* be in the license.
>
> Model releases are an educational problem not a license language
> problem. There are many more issues that the license doesn't cover:
> trademarks, patents, trade secrets, personality and publicity rights,
> hull designs, seed rights, etc., etc. . What should be in the license
> (and on the license deed, and in the FAQ) is a general warning that you
> need to make sure that you have all the rights you need and that the CC
> license is only a copyright license.

Sure, but if we care about a re-use and re-mix culture, andwe want the 
average 
person to be able to participate and not reserve it to the big players who 
can afford the lawyers, more needs to be done outside of the license to make 
it safe for people to take part.
>
> - Rob.

all the best,

drew