[Commons-l] People trying to withdraw their released images

[Robert Rohde]

If you get right down there are a lot of things about copyleft that are
untested in most legal regimes around the world.

A related issue to the one Artur raises is that many legal systems have an
absolute right to withdraw contractual offers if they have not already been
mutually agreed upon.  If you believe that a copyright license is a form of
contract (which is probably true in at least some jurisdictions), then it is
likely that the licensor can stop offering a copyleft license to new
parties, even though they can't revoke it from any existing users.  If a
jurisdiction allows the license to be removed from future uses (all the
language about "perpetual" notwithstanding), then that opens the door for
all kinds of headaches for downstream users that weren't already using the
image prior to the license withdrawal.

Obviously, this is just one kind of ugly scenario, but issues like this will
eventually have to be confronted as the copyleft movement continues to
stretch copyright law beyond the limits at which it was originally
conceived.

Personally, I'm optimistic that the letter of copyright law will ultimately
be able to play amicably with the concept of copyleft, but we will have to
see.
-Robert Rohde


On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 5:03 AM, Henning Schlottmann
<h.schlottmann at gmx.net>wrote:

> Artur Fijałkowski wrote:
> > I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Poland copyright act
> > says that author ALWAYS can withdraw license.
>
> Are you really sure about that? Because it would be a violation of every
> principle of copyright. Licenses can be limited upfront to terms, but an
> unlimited license - such as our GFDL or our cc-licenses, are
> irrevocable. Everywhere, including Poland.
>
> There might be a special provision in Polish copyright law, that
> licenses may be repealed under very limited conditions regarding
> political or social convictions. But in that case the author has to pay
> damages to any legitimate publisher of the work.
>
> A revocation on the spur of the moment because someone doesn't like the
> project anymore is not a legal right and we should decide how to deal
> with those cases.
>
> Ciao Henning
>
>
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