Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Kat Walsh <kat AT creativecommons.org>]

There are two issues within 4.0d3 regarding attribution that we hope
to draw your attention to in this post-d3 discussion period; this is
the first of the two, with the other to follow on a separate thread.

We asked earlier during the post-d2 discussion about the language in
the attribution section regarding the requirement for licensees to
note modifications to the licensed work.
[https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2012-September/007225.html]
One common theme in the feedback was that the requirement in the
working draft was too burdensome. We've altered it in d3 to "indicate
if You have modified the Licensed Material and if so supply a URI or
hyperlink to the Licensed Material in unmodified form if reasonably
practicable".

We're seeking comments on this revision before it is made final in
4.0. A few questions to help direct your feedback:

1. Does this meet the needs of reusers who may want to know that the
material they are receiving is not what the original Licensor
released?

2. Does this meet the needs of licensors who are worried that users of
a work will mistakenly attribute modified versions to them?

3. Is this overly difficult to comply with? If so, why?

4. If this is too burdensome or otherwise inappropriate, what are
other ways to meet the goals described below?

To help inform your answers to these questions, here are some of the
considerations we are already taking into account:

* This is really intended for modifications that have some sort of
meaningful effect, where it would be important for a user of the work
to know the work was modified; we don't want reusers to need to note
every change in font size, for example.

* In 3.0, this was limited to adaptations. We've found in our
consultations that sometimes changes that would not create
adaptations are changes where the licensor would want others to know
that the work is not being used in its original form. For example,
adding or deleting entries to a database, or using an excerpt
instead of an entire work.

* Any such requirements would still fall under the "reasonable to the
means, medium,and context" standard for the other elements of
attribution.

* We don't want licensors who are making technical modifications to
break Licensor's DRM, as they are permitted to do by the license, to
be required to go into detail about what they did.

----

The other half of this consultation on attribution is that this
requirement is now the only place
in the Attribution section where a URI requirement exists. Feedback on
this issue will be requested in its own specific thread.

-Kat

-- 
Kat Walsh, Counsel, Creative Commons
IM/IRC/@/etc: mindspillage * phone: please email first
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