[Commons-l] CC by 3.0 not allowed on Commons?

[David Gerard]

On 14/07/07, Joichi Ito <jito at neoteny.com> wrote:
> So here's the explanation from Chatharina Maracke, the head of CCi.

> > In a jurisdiction, where moral rights do not exist, the first part
> > of the sentence "or as otherwise permitted by applicable law"
> > explicitly makes an exception to the rest of the sentence "....to
> > not distort, mutilate, modify or take any other derogatory action
> > in relation to the work which would be prejudicial to the original
> > authors honor or reputation". This exception ensures that in a
> > jurisdiction, where moral rights do not exist, the latter part of
> > the sentence will not be applicable: "except otherwise permitted by
> > applicable law" means "except the respective copyright legislation
> > permits every adaptation of the work", which is (only) the case, if
> > moral rights are do not exist and not included in the respective
> > law. The only problem here is the understanding of the wording "as
> > otherwise permitted by applicable law". The right "to distort,
> > mutilate, modify or take any other derogatory action in relation to
> > the work which would be prejudicial to the original authors honor
> > or reputation" will not be explicitly allowed by applicable
> > copyright law, but you need to know, that it is not prohibited, if
> > moral rights are do not exist.


Yeah. The trouble is that when I read that sentence as conventional
English, rather than legal code, it still appears to me to mean that
the moral rights restriction exists as a usage restriction.


> > However, I also see the point, that besides being legally correct,
> > CC licenses should be easily to understand. If people don't use CC
> > licenses, because they don't understand them, we would have failed,
> > even if the licenses are "accurate" in view of the law. We need to
> > find the balance between legally well drafted licenses and a simple
> > language. I agree, that the wording of the moral rights section in
> > the "unported" license could probably have been drafted in a
> > simpler way and less confusing so that everyone understands and it
> > does not have to be discussed and explained in lots of E- mails.

> As she says in the last paragraph, if we are not able to be
> understood in the end, we have failed. We'll try to make each of the
> national licenses more clear. We'll also try to make the relevant
> wording in the unported license easier to understand when we version
> up. I just don't think we could fit a version up in the current
> schedule while we're trying to get the local version 3's out of the
> door right now.


I'm not a lawyer - my experience of copyright law is the internet sort
and pushing the bounds of fair use when criticising Scientology and so
forth ;-) OTOH, I'm probably the audience for the licence.

So if a clarification is feasible, that would be really good, yes!


- d.