View source for Creative Commons and Terms of Use Conflicts

Creative Commons and Terms of Use Conflicts

This is just a start. This problem is also perhaps just a subset of a larger problem which I hope to address further at some point in the future.

I will post my initial email to Mike below to document the idea and then below that begin developing the page proper. Then these notes can be moved or removed as the page takes shape.

drew

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drew Roberts to Mike
	
show details Nov 17 (3 days ago)
	
This will just be an example to illustrate the idea:

I was checking into Bandcamp a bit and was looking at their "Bandcamp
Terms of Use"
http://bandcamp.com/terms_of_use

So I get to this part:

"To enable Company to Host your Music pursuant to the above
provisions, you hereby grant to Company the worldwide, non-exclusive,
royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable right to use, reproduce,
copy, and display your trademarks, service marks, slogans, logos or
similar proprietary rights (collectively, the “Trademarks”) solely in
connection with the Service."

and I notice the word "sublicensable" and a bell goes off in my head.

:Note '''your''' above. They aren't asking for an impossible-to-grant right to use others' proprietary rights. And they don't even mention copyright -- this seems to pertain to trademarks and similar. And it doesn't conflict with your also offering work under a nonexclusive public license. However, IANAL [[User:Mike Linksvayer|Mike Linksvayer]] 18:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

So I check:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
and
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/legalcode

and search for "sublicense" and I wonder if the "Bandcamp Terms of
Use" effectively eliminate the use or remixed cc work even for the
very liberal BY license.

Not to mention what other bits of the "Bandcamp Terms of Use" also
might conflict.

OK, here is the basic idea. For CC to do the work or facilitate the
work to show sites such as bandcamp how to adjust their agreements so
as to allow cc licensed works (or at least the Free ones) to be of use
and where possible to craft their agreements so that their business
model can work with just the rights granted by the Free cc licenses
themselves.

I think this will either make it much easier to license our work with
cc licenses while still taking advantage of what such sites can offer,
or encourage more experimenting with cc licenses on the part of those
using such sites, or reduce the legal problems of people who put songs
making otherwise legal use of cc licensed music in their stuff and
then posting it to such sites without a full understanding of the
interactions of the licenses and the TOS.

I hope this was at least halfway clear. I would be happy to try and
refine it if you think it has any legs at all.

all the best,

drew

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The purpose of this page will be to document such conflicts and to suggest possible solutions.

(Personally, I am really only interested in using the Free cc licenses, by and by-sa, and much prefer by-sa for my own works. Therefore, my thoughts may not apply to those using NC in their licenses and those interested in that can add any necessary sections to deal with the same if it is possible to do so.)