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

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.

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

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.)