On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Thomas Morton
<morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
A license, as I mentioned, is not a contract -
although it can (and
regularly does) form part of a contract. The kinds of licenses we deal
with,
though, are not part of any contract. The point
about a contract is that
you
enter into a direct, binding agreement with
someone (or some entity) -
one
that carries a legal obligation.
The free licenses we use don't do this; what they do is set out the
licensing permissions for the media.
Thanks, Tom. There's a story here about the relationship (or the
developing understanding of the relationship) between copyright and
contract law.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100707/04163310101.shtml
The thing I don't understand is how a child could agree to any of
this. A CC license is an agreement proposed by the author. "I will
allow anyone to use this image so long as (for example) you credit me
with each use." A child is not in a position to propose anything, or
agree to anything, or to give away her rights or the rights of her
heirs. But this is what we're asking under-age people to do on a daily
basis, then when they say they have changed their minds - or that they
realize for the first time what their words implied -- we ignore them.
That's really out of order, morally, and probably legally, especially
when the images are personal and of no conceivable benefit to the
project. It means we're being unpleasant just because we can.
Sarah
For the most part, minors are perfectly able to execute contracts. People
are sometimes reluctant to contract with minors because minors can, in some
circumstances, void contracts that are not in their interest. But as a
general rule, contracts with minors are not impossible or illegal.
That's of course a totally separate question from moral responsibility and
whether we should accept licenses from minors for certain kinds of
content... but as history has shown, that kind of argument gets little
traction in the Wikimedia community.