Development of Creative Commons licenses

[geni <geniice AT gmail.com>]

2008/6/17 Björn Terelius <bjorn.terelius AT gmail.com>:
> Geni wrote:
>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I would prefer not allowing redistribution of the work under later
>>> versions of the license, as there is no *guatantee* that the later
>>> versions will preserve the original intention.
>>>
>>
>>
>> It is required to update the licenses in order to deal with changes in
>> the law and technology.
>>
> A license or parts of it may be deemed unenforcable or invalid in which
> case that part will be considered void, but i know of no jurisdiction
> that *requires* the license authors to release a new version of the license.
> Whether or not a new license is released, the work will still be licensed
> under the unenforcable license.
>
> In practice, it is certainly neccesary to update licenses from time to
> time, but I consider it the creator/maintainers responsibilty to apply
> the new license to the work.

The FSF, CC, EFF and the people behind the FAL would appear to
disagree with you. So would most of the copyright cabal on wikipedia
but they are more used to dealing with people who are impossible to
trace and/or dead.

> Automatically applying a later version of
> the license can never help protecting the licensors rights, since the
> work is still released under the older, possibly flawed, license. It can,
> however, harm the licensor if the new license is flawed but the old wasn't.

Failing to update can however fail to support the licensor's intention
which is of at least equal import.

> By allowing the use of any later CC-license, one actually gives away the
> complete rights to the work to the CC-license authors, as the authors could
> in principle change any terms of the license text as they see fit.

Doubtful. It is unlikely that the courts would uphold a license that
went against the intentions of the original.

> Again, while *I* trust the CC authors, I can easily think of people who 
> would
> not want to rely on the honesty of the CC community.

They are free to write yet another messy homebrew license. Licenses
left unmaintained tend to become progressively more problematical over
time.


> As stated above, no such improvements will benefit the licensor.

It will keep the license in line with their intentions and will allow
their work to continue to receive and audience.

> If the licensor do trust the CC-community and wish to let the licensee
> choose which CC-version to use, I think he or she should say so
> explicitly by writing somthing like:
> "CC BY-SA 2.5 or (at your option) any later version"

This rapidly results in what is best described as a horrific mess.
License compatibility issues are always a problem. I see no reason to
add to them.

> By handling updates in this way one allows the licensor to either decide
> the exact version or let the licensee make that decision, without
> mentioning the different licenses in the license agreement.

There are ways people can force an exact version if they really want to.


-- 
geni