CC License Enforcement Strategy
Danyl Strype
Public
Seen by 395
I recently a watched a video from LibrePlanet 2017 where Bradley Kuhn discusses the ins and outs of enforcing the GNU GPL (General Public License), the free code software license most similar to CC-BBY-SA. This talk builds on suggestions he made in a 2009 blog post about gentle GPL enforcement. I've also been in an email exchange with folks from Jamendo, one of the oldest CC music stores, in which they mention difficulties in ensuring compliance with CC licensing conditions as the main reason for de-emphasizing CC licenses in their new site design.
The combination of these two things got me thinking, what responsibility does CC have, as the steward of the licenses, to see that people understand and respect license conditions? Does the ability of the public to understand the various license conditions have implications for the future development of the license suite? What resources and tools does CC have to help people understand and follow CC license conditions, both as a network of formal organisations, and as a global community of CC champions, ?
This is an issue for CC as whole, so we can discuss it in general, as a global issue. But I'm particularly keen to discuss how CC advocates in Aotearoa can help, and what successes and failures kiwis using CC licenses are having in getting the wishes they communicate through license choice respected.
Danyl Strype Tue 9 May 2017 8:05AM
Two suggestions, one informal, one formal.
* Could the global CC network somehow form a mutual aid network, with an easily discoverable hub (probably a website), where people can ask for advice and assistance in identifying license violations and gently prodding re-users to do the right thing?
* Could CC HQ create a CC equivalent of the Software Freedom Law Centre, a group of lawyers willing to give pro bono legal advice to organisations about how to choose the right license for their needs, how to communicate the requirements of that license to re-users, and what their legal options are in the (probably rare) situations of wilful and persistent license violation?
Stuart Yeates Thu 27 Apr 2017 8:27PM
Wikimedia and en.wiki allocates approximately zero resources to licensing enforcement when ti comes to the reuse of CC material, but a great deal when it comes to keeping non-CC content out of wikipedia.
The en.wiki process for enforcing CC is discussed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Non-compliance_process and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_CC-BY-SA_violation_letter which are largely tools to allow users to enforce their own copyrights on third parties.
cheers
stuart
Ryan Merkley · Thu 27 Apr 2017 12:40PM
Great question. I'll use this opportunity to shamelessly plug my session on CC Usability at the CC Summit, which will start asking some of these questions. One part of the failure of people to attribute and comply with license terms is it's confusing or difficult to determine. We'll be talking about ways we can make that easier: http://sched.co/AFa5
I'd appreciate if there are substantive suggestions that come out of the discussion here, that you forward them to me or to Eric Steuer (eric or ryan at creative commons dot org). Thank you!