I don't want to sound defensive, but we had this wording out there
for public comment and we have involved a large number of people from
many countries. While it is "at best a legal opinion" it is more than
the legal opinion of a single lawyer. It is the consensus of a
community of lawyers, judges and legal experts. It is true that the
courts will determine the interpretation, but I would just caution
making it sound like our opinion is the opinion of some single person
with less than an "any law student" worth of experience.
Having said that, we are thankful for the feedback and we are working
to clarify our wording based on your feedback. Also, while IANAL,
many of the points you people have made make a lot of sense. I hope
we can find a better way to try to get people from this community
involved during the discussion phase of the license drafting. ;-)
One more thing to remember is that the current wording is the wording
on the generic license. We really hope that most people won't use the
generic license, but will use their local licenses. We are working
hard to make the licenses more precise in the local versions and I
believe that these will be less ambiguous about the moral rights
issue. Maybe those of you who disagree with the generic license can
take a look at some of these local ones and see if they meet your
criteria.
- Joi
On Jul 21, 2007, at 11:51 JST, Stephen Bain wrote:
On 7/20/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
CC representatives have already responded here on this list with a
clear legal position that the moral rights clause does not add any
new
restrictions, and indicated that they would be willing to improve the
wording in future licenses. What more can they do?
Their statements on the subject are certainly welcome, but they are
not courts, and their "clear legal position" is at best a legal
opinion. That they wrote the licences is not important, it is the
courts who interpret and apply the words used.
The problem with the "except" clause is that the jurisdictions in
which moral rights protection is weak do not really "permit" uses
incompatible with moral rights, they just do not make unlawful those
uses. Their laws are silent on the matter. Any law student can tell
you that "lawful" is not the same as "not unlawful".
we (or a court, or anyone applying the licence)
--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain(a)gmail.com
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