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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Possible way to subvert the intention of CC-BY-SA and other BY licenses

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Possible way to subvert the intention of CC-BY-SA and other BY licenses
  • Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:19:19 -0500

This issue is unfixable. The author always has the power to waive a condition of the CC license. Even if these clauses didn't exist, Eve could still use the picture in a highly offensive collection published CC-BY-SA. Bob, outraged and upset, contacts Eve. She says, "I'll take your name off if you let me use the picture free of any CC license at all." Bob, desperate not to have his name on the collection, agrees.

These two clauses don't create this issue, which is inherent in the nature of a CC license -- it permits some uses the author might not necessarily agree with. Instead, these two clauses help even out the relationship by making attribution not just waivable (which it always necessarily is) but actually forbidden if the licensor objects.

James

On Jan 20, 2009, at 3:06 PM, geni wrote:

"If You create a Collection, upon notice from any Licensor You must,
to the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit as
required by Section 4(c), as requested."

"If You create an Adaptation, upon notice from any Licensor You must,
to the extent practicable, remove from the Adaptation any credit as
required by Section 4(c), as requested."

These clauses are important but they do create a problem.

In this case the CC-BY-SA work is a photo with a single author (Bob).

Eve wants to use the pic without crediting the author.

Eve gets the pic published as part of a collection of highly offensive
works and makes sure Bob finds out.

Bob uses the credit removal clause.

Eve then uses the pic from the collection of highly offensive works
and since there is no credit on it she doesn't have to credit Bob.

In effect CC-BY-SA has been converted to CC-SA.


Getting around this problem is somewhat tricky one approach would be
to add a requirement that in the case of such removals it should be
made clear that such a request has been made and a second requirement
that in such cases a reasonable good faith attempt must be made to
find and credit the author. This however suffers from being rather
vague. A second option might be to allow the author to have their
name/pseudonym replaced by a code that allows the image to be linked
to them by a central repository of such codes. This however is
complicated and the benefit of removing obvious credit in such cases
is reduced (particularly if the authors of the highly offensive works
opt for credit in the same way).

So I don't really have a solution.
--
geni
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