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  • From: Jonathan Sanderson <lists AT quernstone.com>
  • To: cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Cc-uk] CC licensing by minors
  • Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:28:23 +0000

Hello all. My apologies for barging in and kicking off with a query.

I'm staging a small-scale pilot of a video production project, backed by a national funding organisation. Copyright to the works produced will be held by the originators (workshop participants); I plan to encourage them to license their work (most likely BY-NC-SA) so it may be published on the project website. In return, I will license my contributions to them, under the same terms. So far so good.

However, some of the workshop participants will be school students.

The legal advice I have goes like this:

In England, the age of capacity for the purposes of contract law is 18 years old, and a minor's contracts are voidable at his or her option - they are enforceable (so executing a CC license would offer protection for the licensor), but not binding until explicitly ratified on coming of age. Hence, in principle the CC license could be revoked several years after initially being granted, potentially exposing the licensee.

I'd be delighted to hear from anyone with experience of using CC licenses with minors. What issues did you face, and what approach did you take? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

I should also add that there's considerable excitement from the funding organisation around the approach I'm taking. Traditionally, they've demanded all rights to everything done in their name, but we seem to have successfully challenged that and got them thinking about their approach.

--
Jonathan Sanderson
'If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.' (Pascal)





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