[Foundation-l] Decision on Creative Commons 3.0

[Thomas Dalton]

> > "Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be
> > otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or
> > Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations
> > or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other
> > derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to
> > the Original Author's honor or reputation."
>
> The language is not intended to introduce moral rights where none exist
> (which is basically only the U.S.) -- "Except ... as may be otherwise
> permitted by applicable law" -- e.g., in the U.S. mutilation (or
> whatever) is permitted because there is no right of integrity that
> prohibits it. In retrospect wording like "In those jurisdictions in
> which the right of integrity exists, and except ..." would have made
> this more obvious. We will put this in the hopper for 4.0, which
> hopefully is a very long way off. However, I do not see how 3.0 can
> reasonably be thought to endanger the commons (generic and Wikimedia
> Commons in particular) as it does not attempt to add any restriction
> beyond what is inherent in each jurisdiction's moral rights or lack
> thereof. Note that I work for CC but am not a lawyer and this is not a
> legal opinion.

IANAL, but that's not how I would interpret the language. "Except as
may be otherwise pemitted by applicable law" to me means if there is a
law that specifically says you can do something, then you can do it.
It doesn't say that if there is a lack of a law that says you can't,
then you can.

If I were you, I wouldn't wait until 4.0 to change the wording,
release a 3.1 like you would if you spotted a major bug in a piece of
software you'd written.