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  • From: Paul Dixon <paul AT elphin.com>
  • To: cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Cc-uk] When Licensors Turn Bad!
  • Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:04:29 +0100


It may be better to remove/hide this individual's pictures and take
take steps to avoid this happening again.
We do have a user in dispute over re-use of one their images in Wikipedia; one of the avenues he appears to be exploring is revokation of the licence along the lines I've described. However, I'd like to explore the issue in a more hypothetical manner as I believe it is of relevance to anyone building similar collective works - that unless special steps are made a licensor can revoke licence by claiming it's impossible to prove they accepted it in the first place.

Measures might include:

* Better education of users about the implications of the CC
licence. There are materials on the CC website to help with this.
This doesn't address the revocation problem, aside from maybe dissuading a licensor who turns out bad in future!. I believe most of our users *are* educated - firstly, with every image they submit they are faced with this screen

http://files.dixo.net/cc_confirmation_page.gif (28Kb)

I've also written this http://www.geograph.co.uk/help/freedom page all about *why* we've adopted this licence.

There's lively debate in our site forums too.

* Better recording of submission metadata (evidence of who uploaded
what)
This is the essential problem - we know which "user account" uploaded each photo, but we have no way of verifying the identity of the person operating that account at the time of upload.


* Better statements of who you are, what you intend to do with the
data in the long term and what your business model might be (you're
in a .co.uk domain, so you're a business?)
We could probably do a better job here. We're planning on forming some kind of non-profit legal entity in the next few months, but this is a side issue to the problem I'm describing here.


* Clearer statements about the removal of content, the conditions
under which it will and won't happen and procedures for this
happening. Explain why, both in terms of what you're trying to do
and what you're allowed to do under the licence they have given you.
We have an informal policy at the moment which we really should write up. If a user requests removal of their images for any reason, we'll put to them good reasons for leaving the images and/or other ways of resolving any dispute they may have. If they insist, we'll remove them.






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