joegratz.net

I’m liveblogging from Blog Law and Blogging for Lawyers, presented by Law Seminars International.

Mia Garlick:

Blogging and CC are old friends. Early bloggers used CC licenses, and like the idea of sharing and reuse. Bloggers want to disseminate their works widely.

Cc licenses enable clear signaling of what uses are permitted and what uses are not permitted. It allows legal distribution and redistribution of blog posts. CC licenses can help you get noticed.

Attribution. This is required by all CC licenses, and can be to the author or to a third party designated by the author.

[She explains the various license conditions available under CC licenses.]

The least restrictive is Attribution; the most restrictive is …

Q: How do we know which elements of the page are CC licensed? A: It’s difficult to make clear what elements are licensed under what terms. It’s a notice issue.

The most restrictive is Attirbution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

The license is produced in three formats: Human-readable, machine-readable, and lawyer-readable.

It’s international — 30 jurisdictions. We just got into China, where we were hailed as increasing copyright protection in the newspaper. I guess it depends on where you’re coming from.

Details for lawyers! They don’t limit fair use rights. they’re nonexclusive and irrevocable. The CC licensor enters into a separte license agreement with each user; the license runs with the work. You can’t thwart the license’s purposes with DRM. There are no warranties. The license terminates immediately upon breach. The licensor may withdraw the work to new licensees at any time.

Q: How do you withdraw? A: You just pull the cource copy, but people who get copies of existing copies are still licensees.

Q: Is this geared to individual bloggers, not corporate bloggers? A: There are a lot of individuals who use it. In terms of who uses it, the categories are idealists, pragmatists (getting the work noticed), educators (OpenCourseWare), artists who sample giving back to the commons, artists engaging in a creative dialogue with their fans, and citizen journalists.

Two recent court cases. Curry v. Audax, Dist. Ct. of Amsterdam (March 9, 2006) (CC license applied to images; D failed to comply with attribution and noncommercial limitations, and was infringing). SGAE v. Fernandez, Lower Ct. of Bajadoz (Feb. 2006) (bar that played CC licensed music did not need to pay collecting society, since the authors were not collecting society members).

It’s possible to embed license elements in a document, including feeds.

Tips! Be specific about what you’re licensing — text? design? photos? Identify differently licensed content. When you’re getting contributors of content, make sure you’re telling them what license their content will be released under.

The question: Is “Syndicate this site! CC Attribution-NonCommercial” contradictory? Depends on the circumstances. If you choose a NoDerivs license, you can control the amount of content that goes into the feed. What about fair use? What about NonCommercial? There are draft guidelines on NonCommercial out.