Development of Creative Commons licenses

[David Chart <bydosa AT davidchart.com>]

On 2012/08/24, at 17:07, Paul Keller wrote:

> At this point the license becomes meaningless as it does not say: 
> 
> this paper can be used under the terms of creative commons license
> 
> but rather says 
> 
> as far as the licensor is rights holder in this paper he gives permissions 
> to make use of the paper under the terms of the license. there may however 
> be other rights holders and it is up to you dear licensee to figure out if 
> they also allow you to use the paper under these conditions. 

The second is all that the license ever says, even if it includes warranties. 
If someone provides you with false warranties that he owns the rights in 
something, that does not provide you with the right to use it. (I cannot take 
away someone's copyright by lying about owning it.) It *might* provide you 
with a defence if the actual rights owner seeks punitive damages (that would 
be up to the courts), but you would still have to stop using the content to 
which you did not have rights. It might also let you sue the person who 
provided the false warranties, if you could find them, and if they were in a 
jurisdiction you could reach, and if they actually had any money, and if you 
could convince the court that they should be held responsible for the actions 
of someone they had never met and whose actions they could not reasonably 
predict.

That's a feature of the law, not the licenses, so I don't really see that the 
draft can do anything other than make it clear.

(And, incidentally, it would be a feature of any law that made any Creative 
Commons license possible, but not compulsory.)

-- 
David Chart
http://www.davidchart.com/