uncertainty of CC (Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is now CC-BY)

[Jean-Baptiste Soufron]

Well I guess it will be my turn to "try" to explain the meaning and the 
legal issues of the CC licenses.

But, this legal uncertainty will stay for long (there are several other 
issues), it is the reason why I strongly recommended the WNL License for 
precision and legal safety, as well as dual-licensing for good and 
simple compatibility with other projects.

I hope the legal policy will continue evolving between WN emerges from 
beta to its final stage.

Angela wrote:
>>> Any edits made previously remain public domain - it is only new edits
>>> that will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
>> you meant in fact "remain public domain or the other licence which
>> each project had chosen", I suppose.
> 
> Yes, that is what I meant. Edits remain whatever they originally were
> (often PD, but I realise this wasn't the case for some wikis). If any
> text was licensed under something not compatible with CC-BY, it might
> be best to protect those pages and note on them that they were
> licensed under <whatever>.
> 
>> One technical question: can "CC-By-2.1-(a certain country) or later"
>> switch to merely "CC-By-2.5" or "CC-By-2.5-(another certain country)?
> 
> I don't know enough about the iCommons licenses to know whether that
> switch is permitted.

Being the translator of the CC licenses for France and an IP license 
specialist, I can say that there  is no clear answer for this question. 
It mainly depend from national legislations, but it also depends from 
the practical process that it will follow.

Still, I doubt it would be valid if it's only done through an 
annoucement on the WN website. One way or another, it would necessarily 
need the authors of WN to express their agreement for this change.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
CERSA-CNRS PARIS 2