[copyleft-next] Comments on 0.1.1

Luis Villa luis at tieguy.org
Thu Feb 14 16:51:02 UTC 2013


On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 8:44 AM, Pamela Chestek <pchestek at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Luis Villa <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I see
>>>
>>>    This License does not exclude or limit any rights You have under
>>>    applicable copyright [-doctrines of fair use, fair dealing or other-]
>>> [-   equivalents.-] {+law.+}
>>
>>
>> I have not had time to review the entire license (have been on
>> vacation, and CC 4.0 beta 3 is also in need of my eyeballs) but I
>> would say that, while this change is correct in some sense, it makes
>> the license less readable for non-lawyers, who would have no idea what
>> this section refers to, and so might be unable to take advantage of
>> it. I might suggest:
>>
>> "applicable law, such as fair use, fair dealing, or other equivalents."
>
> The purpose was to be more inclusive than just fair use and the
> equivalents, because there are so many statutory defenses - libraries,
> churches, first sale, etc., etc. That's why the reference to fair use
> was removed.  I believe a later suggestion, that Richard agreed with,
> was to even talk out the word "copyright," which would leave room for
> contract-based defenses, etc.  I liked "This License does not exclude
> or limit any rights You have under applicable law" because it
> expresses that we're not trying to take away anything with the
> license, just grant some rights.

Sure, I completely see and agree with all of that, which is why my
suggestion also dropped "copyright" and makes the specifically
enumerated rights (from CC and MPL) into merely a list of examples of
"applicable law." I'm just saying that without some "such as" examples
the language would be completely opaque and useless to a non-lawyer.

Luis


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