Development of Creative Commons licenses

[<zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:35:54 +0200, Gisle Hannemyr <gisle AT ifi.uio.no>
wrote:
> On 05.04.2012 19:50, Francesco Poli wrote:
>> Hello everybody,
>> Section 3(a)(1) of CC-by-nc-sa-v4.0draft1 includes the following part:
>>
>> [...]
>>>     You must, to the extent reasonably practicable, remove the
>>>     information specified in (i) – (iii) above if requested by
>>>     Licensor.
>> [...]
>>
>> where information specified in (i) - (iii) is basically, the author's
>> name or pseudonym, the Attribution Parties, and the title of the Work.
>>
>> I'm still not convinced that this clause meets the Debian Free Software
>> Guidelines. See my previous comment [1].
>>
>> [1] 
>> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2012-January/006602.html
>>
>> Since I don't think that a license can (allow a licensor to)
>> forbid an accurate credit and meet the DFSG at the same time,
>> I recommend that this clause be dropped entirely from CC-v4.0
>> licenses
> 
> I too think this is a very unfortunate clause.
> 
> However, if I've understand its rationale, this clause is put in
> there as a sort of "quick fix" because there has never (before)
> been a clause in the license that deals properly with what is
> known as "moral rights" (Europe) or "author's rights" (USA).
> 
> To make it clear what these rights are, I refer to the Berne Convention
> Article 6bis:
>   http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/6bis.html
> Article 6bis gives me, as an author, the moral right to object to any
>   "distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory
>    action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to
>    his honour or reputation."
> 
> [The Berne convention, btw., is adopted by every country in the world
>  that recognises copyright (including the USA), so I think that having
>  the generic license cover the same rights as is covered by the Berne
>  convention would greatly simplify the porting of the generic
>  license to different jurisdictions, as they are all Berne signatories.]
> 
> As an author, I think this is a very important right to retain.
> I have never understood why the Creative Commons in the past have
> insisted on being "neutral" with respect to moral/author's rights,
> and believe that v4 may be a good opportunity to move away from
> the "neutral" stance and to a more pro-active one.
> 
> Obviously, if some  political or religious group that I really
> despise started to distribute copies of one of my works to promote their
> nefarious cause, I want to be able to tell them to stop
> doing it!

And there goes Freedom out the window. Put it in ND and NC variants if
you must, they are non-Free now anyway. But leave them ***FAR*** away
from BY and BY-SA.

Why should someone's use/misuse of my artistic work be any more
damaging to my reputation than the third owner of a house who is a nasty
criminal damage the reputation of the architect that designed the
building?

Such a use can perhaps rightly be seen to be damaging the reputation of
someone who specifically licensed them to make such a use or who is in
the habit of requiring specific licenses from people for use. People who
grant everyone use don't suffer from that problem. Operating in Freedom
gives protection from that damage.
> 
> And I can't really see *why* a CC licenses should not grant me the
> right to revoke a license if I think a license-taker is hurting
> my honour or  reputation, simply by sending them a message telling
> them so - in the same manner that the present v4 draft grants me the
> right to send them a message where I am only allowed to tell them:
> "Please continue to use my copyrighted work - just remove the
>  attribution".
> 
> I therefore propose that the clause Francesco Poli refers to
> (where an author can forbid a specific license-taker to use accurate
> credit) in removed from the draft, and *at the same time* the
> following paragraph is added to section 5:
> 
>    If the Licensor finds Your use or adaption of the Licensed Work to
>    be prejudicial to his honour or reputation, he can serve you a
>    notice terminating this License.  In that case, You must get
>    express approval from Licensor if you seek new rights to use the
>    Licensed Work under this Public License.
> 
> I think this should be added to all variants to the license, but
> at least to the ND version. (Authors who use the ND-clause seems to
> be those that are most concerned about their honour and reputation.)

Again. In the strongest way. Not for BY and BY-SA.
> 
> Adding provisions for enforcing moral/author's rights also means
> that we can simplify the license even further, by removing most
> the rather awkward language that now make up clause 2(b)(i).
> We can just remove the weird portions where the author waives
> or promises to not assert Licensor's moral rights - as this
> language is no longer necessary if the license empowers authors
> to enforce those rights.
> 
> I think this amendment shall strengthen the license and make it
> more appealing to creators.  One of the most frequent objections
> I hear when I lecture about CC is that the current version of
> CC (v3) has no real provisions for letting Licensor enforce his
> or her moral rights or author's rights.

all the best,

drew