[Commons-l] CC-3.0 and Jimmy's comment on CC-3.0.

[Erik Moeller]

On 7/17/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> At a minimum, I think Creative Commons needs to make an official
> statement clarifying its intentions. However, this isn't sufficient.
> The intent of the license author is going to have minimal sway in
> court; what will be material is the *exact text*, the understanding of
> the licensee, and the understanding of the licensor.

I agree we need more clarity on this issue. Moral rights may seem like
a harmless protection, but in practice, authors & copyright holders
have frequently sued exactly under moral rights provisions to prevent
what many would consider entirely legitimate parody / "fair use".
Surely we should strive to ensure that the licenses grant as much
freedom to re-users as possible.

On the other hand, I'm not happy with the CC 3.0 licenses being
"banned" from Wikimedia Commons. That seems like a drastic step where
simply more discussion and possibly some rewording of the license text
is required. If CC takes the official stance "We wish to protect
author's moral rights in our licenses", that's a different story. But
none of the public statements regarding the licenses seem to be going
in this direction.

Given the legal answers provided in this thread, I support CC 3.0
being fully permitted on Wikimedia Commons, independently from a
separate discussion about the wording of the moral rights clause in a
newer version of the license. Regardless, I've asked Mike Godwin to
weigh in if he wants to.

-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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