A license is, specifically, not a contract.
Tom Morton
On 11 Apr 2012, at 18:30, Sarah <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 6:50 AM, Lars Aronsson
<lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
On 04/11/2012 06:45 AM, Sarah wrote:
Can anyone point me to the basis of the claim that cc licences are
irrevocable? If someone were to upload an image to Flickr with a cc
non-commercial licence, then changed her mind and broadened it to
allow commercial use, Commons would not reject the image on the
grounds that the first, more restrictive, licence was irrevocable.
Granting a license means opening a legal door. Granting another
license means opening another door, and this is okay. That is
called "dual licensing" and the famous example is MySQL software.
But irrevocable means you're not allowed to close the first door.
The people who reuse your content based on the first license,
must still be allowed to do this. If you try to sue them for reusing
your content under a license that you now regret, they are safe
because you granted them an irrevocable license.
Thank you for the explanation. As I mentioned earlier, surely only
adults can grant irrevocable licences. Huge numbers of our uploaders
are under the age of consent. We ask all kinds of questions before
allowing people to upload (are you the author, has your work been
published before, etc), but we don't ask "are you over 18?"
Many of the rest of the uploaders aren't paying attention, and often
the authors aren't the uploaders, but have consented by email without
realizing what they're agreeing to.
What we're discussing here is whether Commons should respect
people who wish to regret having granted irrevocable licenses.
Legally they may (or may not) be able to claim they didn't
understand what they were doing. But then Commons could
respect such wishes even if there is no legal demand.
Yes, indeed, but as we see, they don't.
Sarah
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