All right. I'll go ahead and get started here. Welcome, everybody. I'm Jim Rennie
and this is Licensing Agreements 101, the Creative Commons license. And if
anybody here doesn't know what the Creative Commons license is, basically it
allows content creators to license their content, but reserve some rights in
addition. We're going to get into all that in just a second. But before we do,
because we're going to be talking about the law and legal theories, copyright, we
have to have a disclaimer. All right, this presentation is for educational
purposes only. It is not legal advice, only my opinion on what the law is. I am
not a lawyer yet.
All right, entertainment. I don't know if you're gonna be entertained by this, but
you could be. All right, and if you require legal advice, you should talk to
a lawyer who is licensed to practice law where you live, either your state or your
country if you don't live in the U.S. All right, now we can get on with the show.
Here's what we're going to be doing over the next 45 minutes or so. I'll have a quick
introduction, a little more about who I am and why I'm here, and then short
background on the Creative Commons license, who created it, why it was
created, and then we're gonna walk through the license section by section.
But don't worry, I'm not actually going to read the license to you. You should
read it yourself, and it would be terribly, terribly boring for me to stand
up here and read the license to you. But we are gonna go through section by
section, so after the con, if you want to go back and compare the actual license
to what we talked about here, you could probably teach yourself a little more
about the law. And then we're gonna have how to maximize your protection under
the license, which is really short. There's like two things you need to know
to be fully covered under the Creative Commons license. And if we have time at
the end, we will have question and answer. Although I'm not promising anything, but
hopefully we will have time. All right, first of all, like I said, my name is Jim
and I'm not affiliated with the Creative Commons in any way. You can take that as
a plus or minus. I am a law student currently studying law in New York City.
So like I said, I'm not a lawyer yet. Hopefully I will be. And why am I talking
about the Creative Commons license? And that breaks down into two sections. First,
it's because a lot of people all across the internet are starting to use the
Creative Commons license for their content. There's a lot of commercial
services that utilize the Creative Commons license. And on the other hand,
why am I talking about Creative Commons license instead of, say, the GPL? And the
answer to that is because the Creative Commons license is a little easier to
understand, easier to get through in 50 minutes, and because a lot of what I'm
talking about today will apply to the GPL and other licensing agreements. So you
can take what you've learned and apply it to other licenses, hopefully. And I'm
talking about the Creative Commons because it's really important to know
your rights. And you'll see, basically, you are giving up your rights to the
public when you license your content under this license. And you really need
to know how to protect yourself, what to expect, and if you're a user of the
content, you need to make sure that you follow the license correctly so that you
don't breach the license and could end up in a lawsuit, which nobody wants. Okay, so
what kind of people use the Creative Commons license? Mostly people who are
creating content, not so much coders and programmers, lots of writers and bloggers,
etc. And these commercial services have built-in Creative Commons licensing,
like Movable Type, TypePad for bloggers, Flickr, you can go search for Creative
Commons photos, and even Yahoo and LimeWire have searches specifically for
Creative Commons licensed material. And I'm sure the number of commercial
services that utilize Creative Commons is going to grow as the years go on.
So the Creative Commons itself is a nonprofit organization, and they
originally founded at Harvard in 2001 by such notable people as Lawrence Lessig,
who is on the board, and it's currently at Stanford Law School, Center for
Internet Law and Society, which is run by Jennifer Granik, who is going to be
speaking here, I think, in about an hour and 45 minutes.
Now, the Creative Commons license, why was it created? Well, first of all, it really
was meant to be a non-coder counterpart to the GPL, and there was the perceived
need. What was the need? Well, under federal and state law, originally, there
was full copyright control and public domain on the other side. Full
copyright control, meaning the creator of the content had full control over who
could use it, when they could use it, why they could use it, except for fair use.
All right, thank you. But in general, the creator of the content dictated the terms
when anybody could use it. On the other hand, there was public domain, which meant
the public could use it anytime they wanted to, and the original creator had
no control over their content. And so there was a need in the community for an
in-between point, and that's what the Creative Commons license really is, in-between
copyright control and public domain. And of course, there's the free software ideals
that information wants to be free. We want to share our content with others so that
we can all be more creative, build on each other's content. We don't want to hide
our content, just use it ourselves. So when you select a Creative Commons license,
there are actually several options you can choose from. And attribution is always
required. You have to have the attribution clause in your Creative Commons license.
But the non-commercial use requirement and share-alike requirement, also known as
copy left, those are optional, but we're going to go through those today.
And today, we're going through the version 2.5 license, which I found pretty interesting
because my personal blog, I think, is still under version 1.0. I didn't actually realize
Creative Commons revs their licenses occasionally. So you should go home and check if your content,
what version is licensed under. The Creative Commons still keeps the old versions up and
on the web, so you're not in any danger if you have an old version of it, the license
not being valid, but they do update the legal language from time to time.
All right. Before we get into the actual wording of the Creative Commons license, we have to
go over some basic legal terms concerning licensing agreements. And the first is, what
exactly is a license? A license is basically giving some of your rights or privileges to
someone else who doesn't have them. So, for example, we're all sitting here in the parking
lot of the Alexis Park today, but this is private property. And normally, if you're
on someone's private property without permission, you can be arrested for trespassing. So the
Alexis Park has granted a license to DEF CON and basically to us to be here without
trespassing. So that's what a license is. They're granting the right of use of the
property to us for a limited amount of time. All right. I know this is called licensing
agreements, but the Creative Commons license is actually a contract. And so we have to
define what's a contract. A contract is an agreement between at least two parties, and
you have to exchange something for there to be a valid contract. If it's only one person
giving something to someone else, that's a gift and not a contract. So there has to be
an exchange going on. And the parties have to act as if they're under the contract. You
do not have to sign a contract for it to be valid. You just have to act as though you're
behaving... modify your behavior so that you fall under the contract, act as though you're
using the content as if you're under the contract, and you will be bound to the contract. And
contracts are governed by state law. This is very important. This is why I said at the
beginning, you need to talk to lawyers who live in your state if you have questions about
the law. Because all contract law is governed by state law and varies from state to state.
So to be sure, you always have to talk to a lawyer in your state. So we combine those
two, a contract and a license, and we get a licensing agreement. And under the creative
commons, what the agreement is, is the creator of the content allows people to use that
content how they wish with certain restrictions. And the content user agrees to those
restrictions and has to follow them, which is called a legal detriment because they're
obeying additional rules that they wouldn't have had to obey otherwise. And so that creates
a licensing agreement. Sorry, just a second. Okay. So I know a lot of you are sitting out
there, or maybe some of you, and you're thinking, well, this is all about copyright and what
is copyright. And copyright is under federal law. Why does he keep talking about state
law and why state law is important? This goes back to what I said before. Basically, federal
copyright law creates this bundle of rights that you have any time you create your content.
And copyright, your content is copyrighted the instant you create it. You don't have to do
anything special to gain copyrights. But once you gain those rights and parcel them out to
other people through licensing agreements, that's a contract, and contracts are always falling
under state law. So unless the contract has language that goes directly against federal law
in some way, you should always be covered under state law. All right. Now we're going to get
into some of the actual language of the Creative Commons Agreement. And as I go through, I'm
going to try to emphasize what each section means for you, what the practical implications are
of each section. And so the first one is they define terms they use throughout the contract.
And they define actually six or seven terms, but most important for us are these two,
collective works and derivative works. Now, collective work is any work that redistributes content
that is unmodified, but in a collection with other content. Obvious examples are like a mixed CD
with the original version of the song with other songs, or a collection of short stories.
Those are collective works. They have the unmodified work bundled with other works.
Now, derivative works build upon or change the original work that's being licensed.
So again, obvious examples are remixes of songs, or say if there's a novel and you create a sequel
based on the characters or situations in the first novel, that's a derivative work because you're reusing
that person's ideas. And a work under the Creative Commons, a work is either collective or derivative,
but not both. And my guess would be if you had a collection of derivative works, you'd probably fall
under the derivative works section. At least that's my impression.
All right, section two. Section two is important because it reminds us that the Creative Commons license
explicitly does not want to impede upon fair use rights. Fair use rights are still intact.
And what is fair use? It means that any content that's out there under normal federal copyright, you can use
in a limited way. Like, for example, if you're writing a book review, you can quote some dialogue from the book,
and that's a fair use, probably, because you're not republishing the whole work and it's for critique.
And it's also important to note that because fair use is not being limited in any way, if you're a licensor
of content, if you're a content creator with your content under the Creative Commons, people don't have to use
your content under the Creative Commons. They can choose to follow fair use instead. You're making an offer
for a contract for them to use the Creative Commons, but they don't have to agree to it. They can use fair use.
And it also does not restrict first sale rights. The creator of the content retains all rights to sell their work
and license it in other ways. And there are also other copyright privileges, which I don't want to get into,
because I'll be here for another hour.
All right, section three, the license grant. Now, how is the Creative Commons license being granted?
It's a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license. So most of these are pretty self-explanatory.
Worldwide, obviously, anybody in the world can use it. You're not restricting only U.S. use or distribution.
Royalty-free, you don't have to pay anything, ever, if you use a work under the Creative Commons.
Non-exclusive, anybody who wants to can come use your content. And perpetual, meaning it lasts for the life of the copyright,
which in the U.S. is 70 years after the original creator's death, at least for written works.
And I actually forgot to look. Is that right for all works?
Okay. Okay. Which we're assuming all of us are natural people here, so... okay.
And... all right. No.
But I believe Congress keeps extending the deadline for corporate-created works.
That's kind of Disney's fault, in a way, because they don't want to lose the Mickey Mouse copyright.
All right. Section 3, continuing on, is what exactly is being granted.
And you have, under the Creative Commons license, if you want to utilize someone's work,
you have the right to reproduce it as a collective work or create derivative works,
and you also have public performance rights, which are very important.
You're not limited to creating work for your personal enjoyment.
You have the right to create it for everybody's enjoyment.
All right. Section 4 is the share alike, also popularly known as copy left.
And there are two different sections, protections for both collective and derivative works,
and protections just for collective and just for derivative works.
So basically, share alike or copy left, if you don't know,
it requires the creator of a collective or derivative work to also place their work under the Creative Commons license
so the license gets perpetuated down the line,
and so that the work will always be in the Creative Commons and everybody can always enjoy it.
Now, you have to include a copy of the Creative Commons license, or at least a pointer to it,
and you may not sub-license the work, which is a short quote,
which basically means that you're not allowed... it means several things legally,
but basically it means that you're not allowed to license only part of the work or license it for a limited time.
You have to use the entire Creative Commons license.
You can't change the license. You can't limit the license in any way.
And there are restrictions on adding additional copy protection.
You're not allowed to add additional copy protections to works you create if you're utilizing Creative Commons content.
So, for example, if your original work was something in MP3, which is pretty widely usable,
you're not allowed to then create a derivative work and place it in, like, a proprietary player with additional copy protection.
You have to keep the amount of copy protection, or presumably lessen it, in a collective or derivative work,
which is a nice touch so that we're not all stuck in DMCA problems.
All right, protections just for collective works.
And this is a pretty cool protection that the Creative Commons has provided.
All right, if someone is using your work in a collective work, you can request that they remove the attribution.
Now, attribution is normally required, but you can request they remove it.
So, for example, say, like, the RIAA decides to use your work, which they could. Anybody can use it.
And there's your name plastered big and bold as the creator of this work right up next to the RIAA who are distributing it.
And you decide, you know, I really don't need that.
You can request that they remove your name from your work, and it'll just be anonymous from that point on.
The only caveat to this is the request has to be reasonable.
So, say they print 1,000 copies of a book with your work in it, and they distributed it to bookstores across the country.
You can't call them up and make them recall all the books from the bookstore and destroy them.
You can, however, require them not to put your name on the work from that point forward.
All right, protections just for derivative.
The distributor can pick a substantially similar license.
Now, what this means is there are key elements to Creative Commons licenses, the ones you choose when you pick your license.
Like, today we're doing attribution, noncommercial, share alike.
As long as you keep those main elements, you can change the country that the license applies to.
So, let's say someone takes your music that was licensed under Creative Commons, someone in the UK.
They're allowed to change it from the US license to the UK license, as long as they keep those main elements.
And so, I mean, all the smart lawyers at the Creative Commons, I'm sure, are trying very hard to make the licenses as similar as possible, country to country.
So, this is one of those places where we trust the Creative Commons that they're doing that.
And I'm sure they are.
So, just, if you have content out there, and you see the license has changed to a different country, don't be worried.
This is perfectly acceptable.
All right, 4C, noncommercial use.
I have to admit, this is the one part of the license that is kind of bizarre.
Because here's the quote for the noncommercial use clause.
A noncommercial use means you cannot use the work, quote, in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
And the first couple times I read that, I thought, what the hell does that mean?
And then the second thing I thought was, you know, I could make a lot of money litigating about this pretty easily.
Because, I mean, terms like primarily intended commercial advantage, these are very squishy terms.
They're not very exact.
And these are the kind of terms that lawyers argue about and spend tons of money arguing about all the time.
And I actually had a chance to talk to Wendy Seltzer from the EFF about this clause because I was mystified by it.
And she said they wanted to have a little bit of a wider clause to catch more commercial uses in this.
And, which is a good thing, however, at the expense of certainty.
So, what's primarily intended, what's commercial advantage, I can't tell you.
Yes.
One example I could think of was, say Amazon decides to print up Creative Commons works and sell them on their website.
But they sell them at cost, so they're not making any money off the work.
However, then they start to advertise, hey, we're the only place on the internet you can come and get printed versions of Creative Commons works.
Aren't we great? You should come visit Amazon.com.
That would probably be commercial advantage.
Because they're gaining reputation, they're spending advertising, getting PR from it.
Now, there's a special exception for file sharing and P2P applications.
If anybody's followed the Grokster case that was in the Supreme Court, one of the things the Supreme Court didn't really like about Grokster is that it had banner ads next to people's copyrighted content.
And so they said that Grokster was profiting from everybody's content because they had these banner ads.
And the more users they had on their service, the more money they made off the ads.
The Creative Commons says that, by definition, file sharing and P2P applications do not gain commercial advantage from distributing Creative Commons works.
So your Creative Commons works can always be distributed across file sharing applications, and there's never a problem with that.
This is the attribution clause and what's required to properly attribute someone under the Creative Commons.
So if you're a user of content, you want to take special note of these, obviously.
Because if you don't attribute someone properly, theoretically you could get sued or you are at least in breach of the contract.
And breach is the fancy lawyer word for you're not following the contract and could get sued.
So you have to include the notice that's under the Creative Commons, the name of the original author or their pseudonym if they don't have a real name.
It explicitly states that the pseudonyms work fine.
The title of the work and a pointer to the work if there is one.
Now for derivative works, they require special credit, such as based on the original novel by so-and-so, based on the original song by so-and-so.
So as long as you do all of these things, when you reuse a work, you should be in the clear.
All right, this is actually more bizarre than the commercial advantage stuff.
And I think this just got added in a recent version of the license.
There's a section purely for music royalties.
And it reserves the right of the content creator to collect royalties if there's a commercial performance.
However, if you remember, we already said this is a royalty-free license, and you're not allowed to use it commercially.
So now there's a section basically saying, if you break your promise to use it commercially, I can break my promise to not require royalties, but only for music.
No. Audio recordings.
Printed work is not covered.
Probably not.
He was asking if he creates a work, if there's a printed work as the original work, he creates a spoken word version, is that under the music royalty section?
And I don't think so.
If he sings it.
No, I think it's based on what the original work is, and if the original work is music or not.
And this is totally bizarre, and I don't understand this section at all.
Because when we go on later, you'll see that once someone breaches the non-commercial use section, they're pretty screwed.
And so the only thing I could think of for why this section is now in the license is to give judges a clue as to how to define damages when someone gets sued for commercially performing music.
That's the only thing I could come up with.
Otherwise, this clause seems sort of out of place.
So that just goes to show you, even law students who have studied this thing for months can't figure this crap out half the time.
All right, next section we have, the warranty disclaimer.
Now, this isn't as big a deal for people who do creative works like writings, photography, music.
This is a much bigger deal for coders. Coders should be much more worried about warranties than they are.
But that's a different talk.
Basically, under state law, states place, in a way, they place language into every contract.
And these are called implied warranties.
Basically saying that your work is not... easier examples are for coders, so I'm going to do one.
An implied warranty for programming would be that your work's not going to format someone's hard drive or destroy their computer if they use it.
Because there's an implied warranty that it actually does what it says it does and won't screw someone over.
However, for content creators, it's kind of like, eh, I don't know, what's a photograph going to do to you?
Do to your computer?
The big one is the non-infringement clause, which basically says, here's this content I made.
I'm making no guarantees that it's not infringing on someone else's content.
And don't come sue me if it is.
The problem with all this is that some states do not allow you to waive these warranties.
This section attempts to do that, but not all states allow that.
And this is a purely state-by-state thing, and I cannot give you guidance about what your state does with implied warranties.
This is something, if you're concerned about it, that you need to talk to a lawyer.
But for most content users, it's mostly not a big deal.
Content creators, excuse me.
Section 6 is very similar. It's the limit on liability.
Basically attempting to shield the original creator from lawsuits based on their work.
And once again, this very state-by-state is under the same category as the attempted waiver of warranty in the previous section.
This is another thing. If you're worried about possible liability because of your work, you should probably go talk to a lawyer.
I would say 99% of us who have blogs with our rants and photos don't really care. No one's going to sue us.
But if you have more controversial work, if your work might be found obscene, for example, this might be a problem.
And if you're a coder, like I said, you should be worried.
All right. Section 7.
What happens when somebody violates the license or breaches the license?
Any breach by the content users immediately ends the license.
Immediate, instant license is over.
And this is a pretty cool protection because, you know, you're out there offering your work to people on the Internet.
You don't know who's downloading the work. You don't know who's using the work.
You probably will never even know who's redistributing it or creating derivative works.
So it would be a pain in the ass if there was a requirement that you go find that person if they're in breach,
go find them and tell them to stop using your work or tell them that you're going to sue them, have a cease and desist.
None of that is required. The license terminates instantly if the content user breaches.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
So basically there's a chain of licenses, you're saying.
Oh, I see. So they're saying, like, my example before, you can request your attribution be removed.
And you're asking if someone then uses the work where the attribution has been removed, they don't know who you are,
can you then, are they in breach for not attributing you?
Right.
That's a good question. I don't have a good answer right now.
I'm not sure because resharing derivatives many times, derivative works many times is one of the really hard questions about copyleft in general.
And I'm not going to attempt to solve it right now.
All right.
And as it says here, the only sections of the license that don't end when someone breaches are sections 5 and 6, the ones limiting warranties and liabilities.
So you're still protected from being sued, however, the content user no longer has any rights and it reverts back to federal copyright controls.
Which means they have very little rights and if they're creating a derivative work, they're probably screwed under federal copyright.
All right.
What happens when you want to revoke the license, you want to take your work back out of the creative commons?
And the short answer is you can't.
Because remember we said the license is perpetual.
And you'll see in some upcoming sections that there's even bigger issues for the content creator if they want to remove their content from creative commons.
The long version is you could create a fork in your content.
Which is an easy concept in the coder world.
It's kind of a bizarre concept in the content world.
Basically, since you can't revoke anybody who's already downloaded your picture or whatever and is reusing it, you can't tell them to stop.
They retain that license as long as they want to.
It's perpetual.
You can remove the offer of the contract for future people.
So future users can't download that picture under creative commons.
But those people who already have a license will retain the license.
So then you have two versions, potentially, of the exact same content.
Existing under different licensing arrangements.
The exact same content.
If it's a photograph, for example, it could be exactly the same.
But the people who already have a license, you can't take it back from them.
Or you can, but then you'd be in breach and you could get sued instead.
He asked what the evidentiary requirement is.
And I'm not a lawyer, and I can't tell you.
And it will depend on the state.
And I couldn't tell you even if I knew.
Because that would be legal advice.
All right, here's the reason why the content creator is in some trouble
if they want to remove their license from the creative commons.
The creative commons has language where basically,
if you're the content creator and you're licensing it under creative commons,
you promise with this contract to relicense it every time a content user wants you to.
Every time they're redistributing or performing the work,
you are automatically renewing their license.
And I'm under the impression this is some legal footwork
to get around rules about perpetuity.
Are you a law student?
No, not anymore.
Okay.
But yeah, there's rules against perpetuity,
which are extremely complicated and I don't want to talk about.
But basically, this gets around it by,
the content creator regrants the license every time the content user needs one.
And so that's why the content creator is going to be put in breach
if they stop regranting the license.
This is the severability clause.
It basically says that if one part of the creative commons license is found to be void,
the rest of the contract will still be valid.
So we talked earlier about those warranty and liability sections
and how those vary state by state and they may not be valid in your state.
This is saying that if some judge says,
hey, those warranty sections are no good,
I'm going to strike those out of the creative commons license
in this situation,
the rest of the contract will live on
and continue to operate.
You'll continue to have your protections and be able to use the work.
And so that's a pretty cool protection from the creative commons people.
This is not a required thing.
There's many contracts where as soon as one section is found void,
the whole thing is found void.
All right, section 8D, waiver.
So waiver is knowingly giving up a right that you have under a contract.
Waiver basically can completely remove a section of the contract.
It cannot modify or add to the creative commons license,
but you can completely remove a section by waiving it.
And this is not something you generally want to do.
And the creative commons has made it exceptionally hard for you to do it.
Your waiver must be in writing,
and it must be physically signed by both parties.
Now under normal law, you can waive things by accident.
And this happens all the time.
The creative commons is helping protect you
by making sure you really want to remove part of the licensing agreement
before you actually do it.
So for example, if someone comes to you,
a company comes to you and says,
hey, we love your work, it's really great,
but we want to use it commercially.
But we're willing to abide by the other terms of the license,
but we need to use it commercially,
we want to make some money off your content.
This is the way you could theoretically do that.
You could waive the non-commercial use clause using waiver,
and allow them to use it commercially,
make an exception to the licensing agreement.
But you don't want to do this normally.
The exception is just for the one company,
the person who's signing the agreement.
It's only valid for them.
What was that?
Yeah?
All right.
And finally, at the end of the creative commons license,
there's a little part that says,
please, oh please, don't sue us.
Basically, the creative commons, they're saying,
they created this license for you,
they created this license for us all to use,
so that we can distribute our content more openly,
so that people can reuse it.
But it's not their fault if something goes bad.
And even if it is, even if you think it is,
please don't sue the creative commons.
They're nice people.
Thank you, EFF.
All right.
So, let's talk about how to maximize your protection
under the creative commons license.
There's only two things, well, not only,
but there's two things that are really important for you to know.
You need to make sure the content users are bound to the license,
and make sure content users know what content is covered by the license.
All right.
First, how do you make sure content users are bound to the license?
And the answer is, make sure they can read the contract.
Not make sure they do read it,
make sure they can read it.
That's why we've all seen those obnoxious pop-ups
that happen right after we install software,
the EULA that pops up in a really obnoxious window,
you have to click I accept.
Because the commercial companies are making sure
that you have an opportunity to read the contract.
Under the law, as long as you have an opportunity to read the contract,
you are legally assumed to have read the contract.
And even if you didn't, no court will ever accept the excuse of
I didn't read the contract.
Ever, ever, ever.
If you only learn one thing from the talk,
it should be that not reading a contract won't help you.
In fact, it'll probably hurt you.
So you just have to make sure that people have an opportunity to read the license.
Don't put the copyright notice at the bottom of the page in six-point font
saying this page covered by Creative Commons.
You don't want to hide it away,
at least have the little Creative Commons icon
near your navigation like most people have
that says some rights reserved.
That should be enough.
But don't hide it away, put it in a prominent place.
The next part is make sure you let everybody know
what part of your site is covered.
A lot of sites I see just have the little Creative Commons icon
saying this site covered by Creative Commons,
some rights reserved.
But it's not always clear exactly what content they mean.
If you have a mix of text and pictures,
is the text cover not the pictures?
Are they both under Creative Commons?
Is your site design covered by Creative Commons?
Is your site logo covered?
Is your CSS file covered?
Who knows?
So the important part is clearly tell people
what parts are covered by the license.
Just put a little line before the icon
that says all text on the site covered by the Creative Commons
or all pictures on the site covered by Creative Commons
or all content, right?
If you do that, you'll be way ahead of the game.
And it really makes it easier for content users
so they know which content they can use
and which they can't.
And please put a copyright or Creative Commons notice
on every page that you want to release
under the Creative Commons.
Someone might deep-link to your site
and someone coming to your site may not be aware
that this deep-linked page with no icon
is covered under the Creative Commons.
So to be safe, put the icon on every page.
Okay.
Now, I've talked a lot about people getting sued
and bad things that might happen to you
if you don't follow the license correctly.
But, I mean, 99% of the time,
all the content put under the license
or all the content that you use under the license,
all those transactions will go just fine.
You shouldn't have to worry too much.
But the important part is to understand your rights.
Understand what you can and can't do
under the license to protect yourself.
I mean, you really are giving up your rights here.
You're giving up your copyrights to the community,
so you should know what you're doing.
And if you feel unsure, like I said, contact a lawyer.
I know a lot of people can't afford a lawyer,
but there are free legal services available.
If you go to almost any law school,
you can probably get some sort of free legal advice.
I know in New York, where I live,
there's Lawyers for the Arts
who give free legal advice to artists,
and this would be right up their alley.
So there are options for you if you do have legal concerns.
Before I take more questions, let me put this up.
If you want to learn more about copyright or licensing agreements,
here are some really good sites.
The U.S. Copyright Office, obvious one.
The Creative Commons site itself.
The EFF has a really great new Blogger's Law Guide
that they released just recently.
And if you haven't already,
I encourage you to go out to the EFF dunk tank
and contribute to the EFF.
North Carolina State has a nice little tutorial
that I Googled up and found.
And it's mostly about how to avoid infringing copyrights,
because this is university students,
so there's an audience for this.
They're mostly worried about people ripping off music.
But it's a good overall tutorial.
And finally, if you have access to Lexis or Westlaw,
this is a really great article about the GPL
and whether it's enforceable.
And the biggest issue in enforceability of the GPL
is not any of the legal language,
or at least this author says,
it's not any of the legal language of the GPL.
It's the fact that users don't know
that it's covered under the GPL.
Coders will just throw the license in some subdirectory
called license.txt and not ever tell anybody
that it's covered by the GPL.
And that's a really huge problem.
But this article goes through
10 commonly asked questions about the GPL,
10 threats to the GPL,
and in the end finds that the GPL will probably be enforced
by a court whenever the ultimate challenge to the GPL comes.
So it's a really great article.
All right, that's my bit.
And if you have any more questions,
I think we have 5-10 minutes for questions.
Preferably related to the Creative Commons licensing
and not to general copyright issues.
I may run out of knowledge.
The next talk after this is
the revolution will not be copyrighted.
Is that right?
And there's your speakers right there.
Any questions about the Creative Commons?
If they put it under the Creative Commons license originally?
Probably not because you're acting as the agent
of the copyright owner.
And they can always do whatever they want with it.
Like I said, the people who already downloaded their image
under the Creative Commons license
would still be allowed to use it.
But if the user of your service changes their minds,
I don't see a big problem
because you're only acting on their orders
and they still retain their full copyright control.
How does it compare to normal copyright protections?
How does it compare?
Why would you do Creative Commons
instead of normal copyright protection?
Every time someone wanted to use your content,
you'd have to specifically grant each user
a license to do so.
And you'd basically have to write up
your own agreement every time.
Or find another alternative license
to the Creative Commons.
Creative Commons is mostly
you put content on your website
you invite everybody to come use your content
for whatever purposes they like.
Under normal copyright law,
they can only use fair use,
which is a limited use.
This allows full reuse of your content.
Does that answer your question?
Sort of?
Are there any further questions?
If not, I will shuffle off stage left.
Alright, thank you everybody.
And stay tuned for The Revolution
will not be copyrighted up next.