Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

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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