Cc-uk mailing list

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Tuesday, July 13, 2004, at 02:20PM, Christian Ahlert 
<christian.ahlert AT oii.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

>Okay! Here a question from a non-lawyer, no-clue person about copyright.
>Why (Rob) does the UK-license need to resemble so closely the US-license (as
>you seem to imply)? Its clear to me that it needs to follow the "spirit" and
>the "intention" of the US license..

IANAL, and I'm nothing to do with CC...

There's two ways in which I think the UK license should resemble the US 
version.

It should, if possible, resemble it structurally. This is so that when we 
talk about 5a we know what we're talking about, whatever the jurisdiction. 
The sections of the license can become a useful shorthand. If this isn't 
possible it's not too bad, though. The German 5a isn't the American 5a, so 
there isn't a precedent for this.

Far more importantly the license should replicate the requirements and 
provisions of the US license as closely as possible. This is the spirit and 
the intention, I suppose, but with rigour. If I can make a translation of 
licensed work under the US version but not under the UK version, or if the UK 
version requires audits whereas the US version doesn't, then the UK license 
is incompatible. Incompatibility is bad. The whole point of the iCommons is 
to make compatible legal documents for the licenses. These legal documents 
will sit between the human-readable description and the machine-readable 
metadata. See the diagram of the licensing model at:

http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/

and read the description of the process at:

http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/overview

We need the UK license to be compatible, otherwise this model breaks and we 
end up with content ghettoes (ie I couldn't use German or Brazilian work, 
they couldn't use my work). This would be very bad, in this situation IMHO 
we'd be better off just using the original US CC license.

Don't get me wrong, I think the second draft of the CC-UK license is 
*excellent*. My only concern (and it's a serious concern) is that the license 
absolutely must be compatible with the original CC license to the maximum 
extent possible in English/Welsh law. Any variations not absolutely requried 
by legislation should not be included.

- Rob.