Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Paul Keller <pk AT kl.nl>]

On 27 Aug 2012, at 17:49, drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com> wrote:

> On Monday 27 August 2012 11:02:40 Paul Keller wrote:
>>> But you cannot make that un-watered-down statement without exposing
>>> yourself and downstream users to risk.
>> 
>> yes i can. by asking other known rights holders
> 
> One problem is with the term "known rights holders." What about unknown 
> rights 
> holders?

ok, i think i have to confess to a major fuck up here. i was just trying to 
compose an answer and as part of that answer i wanted to quote the last 
sentence from my original mail to the list. turns out that my original mail 
to the list is missing two paragraphs. this is most likely to a cut-and-past 
mistake of mine when i copied the text of the mail from my text editor into 
the mail (this probably also explains some of back and forth in this thread, 
since i was under the assumption that i had send those two paragraphs during 
the subsequent discussion). 

so my original email was supposed to end like this (last paragraph that i did 
send to the list plus the two missing ones): 

>> One other reason why this language is problematic is that it completely 
>> devaluates what it means to apply a Creative Commons license to something. 
>> Say i am the writer of an introduction to an essay collection. Under the 
>> current language i can simply make the entire essay collection available 
>> under a CC license without needing to discuss this with the 20+ essayists 
>> who have essays in this collection. Under the current language it is the 
>> responsibility of the licensee to figure out that i have not obtained 
>> permission from the essayists and that the license actually only applies 
>> to the introduction. In this situation the language quoted above ensures 
>> that i am behaving correctly and have nothing to fear for applying the CC 
>> license to parts of the work that have other rights holders.
>> 
>> I can imagine that the above scenario points to the reason for having this 
>> language in the licenses. It protects licensors who accidentally apply 
>> licenses to works that are covered by third party rights as well. While 
>> this is something that needs to be addressed in order to keep the licenses 
>> usable for risk averse institutional licensors i do think that the current 
>> language is out of balance. 
>> 
>> I hope that we use the opportunity presented by the current versioning 
>> process to re-balance this aspect of the licenses. as far as i am 
>> concerned i would like to see an approach that combines an obligation on 
>> the licensor to obtain permission from other rights holders, with a clause 
>> that minimises their liability in case of accidental failure to do so.

i guess the omission of these tow paragraphs did give the impression that i 
was simply ignoring what your are calling unknown third party rights (or 
accidental inclusion of third party rights in the language of my original 
post). So what i have tried to propose with this mail really is a rebalancing 
along the lines of the last sentence. does this make more sense? (and sorry 
again for creating this confusion in the first place) /paul