Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gisle Hannemyr <gisle AT ifi.uio.no>]

Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
> Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
>> Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:

>>> Could somebody please clarify what is the intended effect of the second
>>> sentence of the moral rights clause in the 3.x licences? It says the
>>> author waives "this Section" to the extent they need to -- what is that
>>> meant to accomplish?

>> "this section" is the moral rights section of the license, and what is
>> meant is that the Original Author waives his or her moral rights, as
>> (for instance) expressed in the following sentence:
>>
>>    "You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory
>>     action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to
>>     the Original Author's honor or reputation."

> Okay, yes, that was my reading of it -- the author waives the moral 
> rights section of the CC licence.
> 
> I think that is a mistake in the section that needs to be corrected. In 
> jurisdictions where there are moral rights, waiving a section of a 
> licence would not be the same as waiving moral rights, even if that 
> section describes the right of integrity.
> 
> Surely, in order to waive the moral right of integrity, the clause would 
> have to say that the author waived or agreed not to assert their moral 
> right of integrity -- no?
> 
> Waiving the section of the licence would only be effective if that 
> section gave the person any rights -- which is exactly the misreading 
> that CC is trying to correct now!
> 
> Am I alone in reading it this way?

Not any more :-) .

I think this is an excellent point.  However, the phrase
"the Licensor will waive or not assert this Section"
(as opposed to "the Licensor will waive or not assert
his moral rights") is also present in the proposed 3.01 version
of the moral rights clause, so whatever the new version is not
trying to accomplish, it  is not to correct the problem with
the text that you point out.
-- 
- gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no - http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ]
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