Commons talk:Licensing/Creative Commons 3.0

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Creative Commons 3.0 Licenses

Creative Commons has announced the adoption of the Creative Commons 3.0 licenses. Where possible, their Choose A License form now recommends CC 3.0 licenses. One important change is that they've done further work on internationalizing the "legal architecture" of their licenses. In consequence, the generic CC licenses and US licenses are no longer identical - the US license is treated like any other country-specific CC license. So far they've only released updated versions of the Generic licenses and the new US licenses.

The old cc-by-sa-2.5 and cc-by-sa-2.0 licenses include terms that permit derivative works be relicensed under a successor license, so they're automatically upwardly compatible with the CC 3.0 licenses. Should we consider updating the list at Commons:Copyright_tags to include the CC 3.0 licenses and make the necessary changes to indicate that they've superseded the CC 2.5 licenses? I've updated the bash script at Commons:Creative_Commons_copyright_tags to accommodate the 3.0 licenses as well as the new 'us' country specifier. —RP88 05:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh wow. They included a "do not insult the author clause"! Holy crap! I've never seen this in a publicly released draft.

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation.

I saw this text in some non-public early drafts months ago and had huge objections that these terms would cause the license to be a poor choice as a free content license or not even be a free content license at all (at best it's an invitation to sue under copyright if someone doesn't like your enhancements). While it is good to make sure people not misrepresent authors, thats why fraud laws exist and thats why CC licenses also offer non-attribution by request. The text as written would allow someone to use copyright as a weapon against criticism by denying permission under the license to those who criticize. That is something that we can't accept in a free content license.

I thought these terms were discarded because they were not included in the most recent public draft that I've seen. Far from adopting this license, I'm probably going to recommend that we forbid it. I have to get to bed now, I can't wait to see how this mess pans out. --Gmaxwell 06:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting enough, they do not include the "prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation" clause in the US versions of the license, just the Generic licenses. According to them this is the "moral right of integrity" clause that they're already including in some form in many of their country-specific licenses (since most countries grant more expansive moral rights to artists than the US law does). If this is a problem, should we be reconsider the country-specific licenses that are already in-use on Commons? —RP88 07:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I just checked, the cc-by-sa-2.0-de license already has a very similar clause, namely:

"Obwohl die gemäss Ziffer 3 gewährten Nutzungsrechte in umfassender Weise ausgeübt werden dürfen, findet diese Erlaubnis ihre gesetzliche Grenze in den Persönlichkeitsrechten der Urheber und ausübenden Künstler, deren berechtigte geistige und persönliche Interessen bzw. deren Ansehen oder Ruf nicht dadurch gefährdet werden dürfen, dass ein Schutzgegenstand über das gesetzlich zulässige Maß hinaus beeinträchtigt wird."

The cc-by-sa-2.0-de license is in use on hundreds of images. Did this come up previously when that license was approved for Commons? —RP88 08:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It states that the freedoms granted by this license are limited by applicable laws. This license does not restrict any freedoms. It is a clarification and gives the user more security by avoiding those kinds misunderstandings that some people here seem to have about the freedom to commit libel and slander. The argument that such a term would constitute a weapon against free speech is ridiculous, the legal tools for such actions are already there. This clause is very likely to harden the license and protect it against attacks based on allegations of discrepancy with local laws concernting personality rights. --Dschwen 08:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Quite right, this is the moral right to the integrity of the work. I think (but I would have to check) that an author cannot give up this right. It's not a problem in general, and the right exists in countries that know it whether you mention it explicitly in the license or not. We've got lots of images that, while freely licensed, cannot be used for all purposes (COAs, flags, insignia such as seals and logos of U.S. governmental organizations, etc.) All this right to the integrity of the work means that any use of a work must not be derogatory to the author's honor or reputation. It forbids a user to use the work to libel or slander the author. The problem I have with the phrasing in this CC license is that "You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action..." is too broad. If modification were not allowed, this would be a ND license. The modification they mention applies only to derogatory modification. Lupo 10:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

ACK. In Germany Bundesverfassungsgericht has decided not to allow (derogatory) manipulations of images of living persons. We do not see this as a barrier for the WP. We only respect Copyright law and our Entstellungsverbot in the UrhG is an absolute frontier for derivative works under free licenses --Historiograf 11:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, the personality rights also limit uses of freely licensed images, but again that's not a coypright problem per se. To make a concrete example: one cannot take, say, an image of a person (whether freely licensed or not, and even of a celebrity or other person of public interest), and use the image in an advertising campaign without the consent of the person shown. For a real and very recent case (from February 22, 2007) invloving an image of David Beckham, see here. (The image in this case is probably not freely licensed, but the dispute is not about copyrights—which Beckham probably doesn't hold anyway— but about personality rights.) Lupo 16:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

You're quite right. And surely the end result is essentially the same: anyone downloding an image from Commons which is licensed under CC 3.0 and who uses the image in a way which is, for example, insulting to the creator (possible breach of licence) is in a similar position to someone who takes an image of a celebrity and uses it without consent in advertising (possible libel). In both cases, the person who has 'misused' the image is open to being sued, but since neither the original uploader nor the Foundation has encouraged such misuse, both should be safe from legal consequences. --MichaelMaggs 19:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, the foundation should always be safe since they are just a service provider.. and uploaders should *usually* be safe, although I could certainly see someone making an argument that an edited version was mangled and hurt the reputation of the author. But even ignoring this, we should reject these terms for the same reason we reject -NC: even though our actions are okay, the license adds limitations which make the result not freely licensed, which defeats our long term goals. We don't accept licenses which prohibit use in advertising (cc-sampling+ for example) for the same reasons. See below my parallel argument with respect to illegal hacking. :)--Gmaxwell 19:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

There is zero problem with other laws prohibiting libel or fraudulent misrepresentation, just like the there isn't a problem that it is still illegal to hack into someone elses system using GPLed software. The problem here is that these terms have added a substantial additional limitation to the license everywhere but especially in jurisdictions which do not recognize the moral right to the integrity of the work. I say everywhere because even in locations where a legal argument could be created based on a moral rights claim this license makes it possible to raise a complain as a pure license violation. This also will likely make it much easier to enforce a judgment from a nation with unfortunately restrictive laws (like France) in someplace less restrictive laws (in the US).

It could have, instead, been written as a clarification which stated that the author endorses derivatives but that the license isn't a release of liability for slander and fraudulent misrepresentation. Instead we have terms which create new restrictions on the nature of use within the licenses... it wouldn't be acceptable even if the limits existed in other laws everywhere, but it is far worse because the limits the license imposes are novel, vague, untested, and do not map perfectly to the limits *anywhere* and also go far beyond the limits in some places (like the US).

As far as I can tell CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE was not explicitly approved (am I wrong, anyone have a link?), it was just allowed because it was understood that CC licenses from other jurisdictions were intended to be functionally equal but written in the language of the local laws. We trusted but we forgot to verify. Actually, my german is rusty, but it appears to me that the CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE is focused on personality rights of the subject of the photograph, not the a moral rights of the author, and most importantly doesn't add restrictions but instead recognizes that there exists external legal limits to the permission granted. I wouldn't protest language that reminded the licensee that they may have other obligations that the licenses is unable to release them from, the problem comes in when we change from a license into a contract by converting it into a covenant not to criticize. Am I misunderstanding the 2.0-DE text? Could someone translate it for me? --Gmaxwell 19:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the text above from cc-by-sa-2.0-de pretty clearly says, except as permitted by law, that derivative works may not endanger the reputation of the author. —RP88 22:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

No sorry, this discussion doesn't do justice to cc-by-sa-2.0-de, it is exactly the other way around. The license says that the freedoms granted by cc-by-sa-2.0-de are limited by the law. That's actually a no brainer. --Dschwen 08:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The terms in dispute might be a reason to reject cc-by-sa-3.0 or cc-by-3.0, but these terms do not appear in cc-by-sa-3.0-us or cc-by-3.0-us. In fact, the language in the CC 3.0 US licenses appears to be a direct decedent of the language in the previous CC 2.5 generic licenses. Would it make sense to permit cc-by-sa-3.0-us and cc-by-3.0-us, but forbid cc-by-sa-3.0 and cc-by-3.0, or would that be too confusing to uploaders? —RP88 22:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see any problem with the explicit mention of the moral right to the integrity of the work. First, I think that libellous uses of a work would, in countries that do not know this moral right, probably fall under the "normal" libel laws. Second, who in his right mind would want to allow uses of a work of his that would be derogatory to his honor or reputation? Third, the U.S. acknowledges the moral right of an author to the integrity of his works at least for works of the visual arts since the VARA has been passed. See 17 USC 101 for the U.S. definition of "work of visual art". Lupo 23:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, I personally don't have any objections with the "moral right of integrity" clause in the generic CC 3.0 license (or as CC now calls it, the "Unported" license). I'd just like to know if those who consider CC 3.0 Unported objectionable also feel that the CC 3.0 US license is not acceptable. —RP88 00:42, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I also don't see this as a reason to reject the CC 3.0 licenses. These restrictions exist for *all* images from or used in those countries that have moral rights provisions in their law (and many countries do), regardless if they are CC or not. Even PD images can have those same restrictions as moral rights are often perpetual (no expiration) and non-transferable (the author cannot waive or sell them, no matter what). Users of commons images cannot violate moral rights restrictions in any case; I see no reason to bar CC 3.0 licenses for having the same rules. Carl Lindberg 05:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Even if I were to agree that this term adds no more restrictions in nations without moral rights (and I do not agree), it would still add the restrictions in nations which have no such limits. Nature of use restrictions are unacceptable in a free content license. Can you clarify your claim "Users of commons images cannot violate moral rights restrictions in any case"?

In any case, the license has its own vaguely worded limitations on the sort of derivatives you can make... so all must worry about those restrictions along with any moral rights obligations that exist.

Even if we ignore our free content mission, I'm concerned that these rules would be directly harmful to our own activities. I've been offended in the past by some of the hamfisted photoshopping I've seen here, I don't think it's much of a leap for someone to argue that we were distributing a reputation harming mutilation of their work.

Oh and Lupo, your commentary of VARA is misleading. VARA only applies to a limited subclass of fine art (in particular the limited distribution requirement would likely exclude any work distributed on the public internet, if any digital work wouldn't be excluded as an "electronic publication") and furthermore, criticism will bale you out. I'm somewhat disappointed that you brought it up here because its almost completely inapplicable and only served to throw a misleading twist in the thread. --Gmaxwell 06:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

No need to be disappointed. I mentioned the VARA in good faith, because I think it might be relevant. Consider Image:Babe Ruth statue.jpg: this sculpture is clearly a "work of visual art". We do have the permission of the author of the statue to publish this image under the GFDL, and we do have the photographer's permission to do so. Hence, copyright-wise, this image is fine. But what if someone modified this image in a really hideous way that would be derogatory to the sculptor? Does the moral right granted by the VARA extend to reproductions of works of visual art?

However, I don't understand your "criticism will bale you out" comment. Of course fair use, parody, and criticism are still allowed, and so I don't think this moral right to the integrity of the work can be used to suppress any of these. I think Samulili has it right, below. Lupo 13:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation.

Note, that the condition doesn't say that the author musn't be offended. The derivative work, however, shouldn't be detrimental to the author. I'd like to hear from other countries, but at least in Finnish legislation the difference between these two ways of interpreting is huge: whether or not the work is detrimental to the author should be judged on objective criteria and not by the subjective feelings of the author. If this is a common interpretation, some arguments against CC 3.0 are misleading (such as "if someone doesn't like", "weapon against criticism", "offended").

BTW, if you (general "you", not referring to anyone in particular) publish some of my images in Finland in a way that is detrimental to me, I'll sue your sorry ass and you will pay regardless of the license that the image has on Commons. That's law :) Samulili 11:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The author must first be offended to bring a complaint to court, of course. Due to the requirements of these terms a court would be unlikely to simply dismiss such a case. This term creates a substantial opportunity for someone who was simply offended to be a very expensive annoyance. And again, I would argue that we have in the past damaged images under some sets of objective criteria. In some countries, such as the US, it should be straightforward to get such a case dismissed. Not so once we have this condition in the license.

I don't see why you characterize my statement of this requirement being a possible "weapon against criticism" misleading. According to the term if you "reproduce, Distribute" a covered work you may not "take other derogatory action" which would be "prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation". Certainly copying a work to point out what a unskilled photographer, or dishonest journalist someone was would be a derogatory action which is prejudicial to their reputation.--Gmaxwell 16:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

With regards to your first concern, even if true, the absence of a "moral right of integrity" clause in the generic CC 2.0 and 2.5 licenses provides you no protection from a lawsuit if the author's copyright originates in a country that grants moral rights. As it stands today, if I were to make use of an image uploaded to Commons under a CC 2.0 or CC 2.5 license (or even the GFDL) and the uploader created the work in Germany, I have to make sure I don't violate the uploader's moral rights, or risk being sued. The exception to this is that, due to the very limited moral rights in the US, if I, as a citizen of the US published my derivative work solely in the US, the German uploader would have very little recourse against me if I violated his moral rights. If I weren't a citizen of the US, or I wanted to publish my work to the rest of the world, he could bring suit since most countries uphold moral rights. If you're truly concerned that US citizens using CC licensed works of other US citizens are at greater risk using CC 3.0 then the proper response is to encourage US uploaders to use the CC 3.0 US licenses. Pretty much everyone else in the world already has to be concerned about moral rights with the existing CC/GFDL licenses and adopting CC 3.0 won't change this.

With regards to your second concern, you're forgetting that the CC 3.0 "moral right of integrity" clause doesn't prohibit use that is legal - in the US it is legal to point out what an unskilled photographer someone is, even if it is prejudicial to their reputation, so the clause does not prohibit your use of his CC 3.0 licensed photos to make this point. —RP88 17:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

There are a lot of people in the world who don't live in places with effective moral rights laws, this will extend jurisdiction to them. It's not clear how it should be interpreted. Lets say someone in France releases under CC-by-sa-3.0-unported, then I (a US citizen who doesn't usually travel to France) photoshop it in a way which is non-malicious but which the original author hates and could claim could be expected to damage his reputation. My changes would be against the law in France where the upstream author is. Where does that leave me in the US? I've made a change which is not permitted by law in the locality of the license. Without this term a US court wouldn't care about such a complaint, and it would be difficult to enforce a judgment against me made in a french court. With this term in the license, I expect that a US court would quite reasonably look to french law to determine the meaning of the license. If the term only applied local law they would be pointless, if that was the intention it would have been possible to use less misleading text which simply pointed out the other limitations of local law are not being waved.--Gmaxwell 18:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

In this hypothetical, you'd be safe. In the US you can use any work licensed cc-by-sa-3.0-unported under the terms of the cc-by-sa-3.0-us license due to 4.b.(iii):

You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License.

As mentioned earlier cc-by-sa-3.0-us completely lacks the clause which concerns you. I really believe that work available under CC 3.0 licenses should be permissible on commons. —RP88 05:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Only "an Adaptation" not a verbatim copy. Furthermore, while you can distribute an adaptation under an alternative license, you will have still received the original under a license with the unacceptable terms. As strange as it might be people who receive the work from you will have more rights than you do, because it's the license which you receive which covers your use not the one which you may grant. Of course, it shouldn't be a shock that you can't just escape the requirement, anything less would make the term completely pointless. An additional issue is that someone could take work licensed under cc-by-sa-3.0-us and later convert it to the unacceptable generic, and perhaps even take action against the original author if he made a derivative under the re-licensed derivative. While licenses which can be restricted by downstream users (for example, public domain) are not forbidden on commons, this is a particularly confusing and surprising risk. --Gmaxwell 05:58, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

← With regards to your first point, in your hypothetical you "photoshoped" the original. It was an adaptation. With regards to your second point, If I understand correctly, you propose the following scenario:

1. that a US citizen, let us call him Joe, creates work A and licenses it under a cc-by or cc-by-sa license (2.0 or later),
2. then Francine, a citizen of France, uses A as the source for a derivative work B and releases B with a cc-by-sa-3.0-unported license,
3. then Joe takes B and creates C in such a way as to impugn the moral rights of Francine, and
4. finally, Francine takes Joe to court in France.

This exact scenario can already occur today with any license compatible with the original license. If you object to that scenario, then, by extension, you're basically arguing that citizens of countries that grant moral rights should not be permitted to submit content to Commons. On the other hand, are you only worried about the scenario in which in step 4 Francine takes Joe to court in the US? This isn't a problem because the unported licenses specifically say that for purposes of enforcement that the law to be applied is that of the "relevant jurisdiction in which the License terms are sought to be enforced." Francine can't get a judge in the US to apply the French legal conception of moral rights if she releases her work under cc-by-sa-3.0-unported, in the US she'll only be able to enforce the very limited moral rights granted by US law and treaty provisions. —RP88 08:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I suspect you are also worried about this scenario:

1. Francine, a citizen of France, creates a work and releases it with a cc-by-sa-3.0-unported license,
2. then Joe, a US citizen, takes the work and distributes verbatim copies in an effort to impugn the reputation of Francine (perhaps he believe the photos display poor talent, or some such), and
3. in response, Francine takes Joe to court in the US.

Even if his distribution is illegal in France, Joe is as safe as if Francine had released her work with a generic cc-by-sa-2.0 license instead of the cc-by-sa-3.0-unported license. For either license he is safe in the US, so long as he has not committed a US tort, such as slander. As I mentioned above, Francine can't get a judge in the US to apply the French legal conception of moral rights to her cc-by-sa-3.0-unported licensed work, in the US she'll only be able to enforce the very limited moral rights granted by US law and treaty provisions. The CC 3.0 moral rights clause doesn't prohibit use that is legal and in the US it is legal to point out what an unskilled photographer someone is, even if it is prejudicial to their reputation, so the clause does not prohibit your Joe's use of Francine's CC 3.0 licensed photos to make this point. —RP88 09:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC

This discussion has been quiet for a couple of days. Does any one still have objections to the new Creative Commons 3.0 Licenses? Should we consider adding them to the list of acceptable free licenses, or has no consensus been reached? —RP88 09:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it may be best to wait untill we see what some other groups think.Geni 14:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

What are these other groups and where are they discussing the issue? Samulili 19:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

not imposible that the debian lot might. Various other free culture groups. A little at slashdot[1]Geni 20:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The licensor is in France, and through the license he makes a pretty strong statement against derived works of a certain character. Through the license he makes a minor exception of "as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law". One reasonable counter-argument is that most derived works are not legal if the original work is not under a license which allows them. The license text seems to support the interpretation that it is not intended to exclude fair use or otherwise protected uses; nothing in the license text contradicts that interpretation.

However, even ignoring that avenue of argument, I can't imagine a US court applying US law as the test of the 'is legal' requirement: It is unreasonable to expect a French citizen to have knowledge of every foreign country in the world when deciding what he will and won't permit as the licensing terms for his work. Since the license is a grant from the licensor, a natural reading of his intent in mentioning the law is to use his native law, under which no argument of legality could easily be made. As such, it would appear straightforward for a French citizen to directly push for *criminal* prosecution for copyright infringement in the US, either directly or after getting a judgment of infringement in France.

As Geni points out, this is being discussed elsewhere. I think that the commons community here would be overstepping its authority at this point to permit the license, since this is a much broader issue. I do think the discussion is worthwhile, however. --Gmaxwell 18:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

US courts would most certainly apply US law as the test of the 'is legal' requirement in the CC 3.0 Unported licenses. The CC 3.0 License explicitly contains a jurisdiction clause that specifies that jurisdiction is where the license is sought to be enforced. US courts commonly honor contract clauses that specify that the contract is to be interpreted under the laws of particular legal jurisdictions, and when they choose to ignore such clauses, they interpret the contract under their own jurisdiction, not foreign jurisdictions.

This is the first time you've mentioned criminal, as opposed to civil, copyright concerns. In what manner do you think the CC 3.0 licenses are special with regards to criminal prosecution in the US? Criminal prosecution is the US always occurs under U.S. laws. Furthermore, US criminal copyright prosecution occurs only under certain specific circumstances. It requires things like willful infringement, criminal intent, retail value in excess of certain dollar amounts, etc.

I think having the discussion here, in Commons, is exactly where it should be occuring. For all we know, other groups are saying "We should hold off on adopting CC 3.0 until we see what Wikimedia Commons decides." :-) I'll confess I'm confused by the "commons community here would be overstepping its authority at this point to permit the license, since this is a much broader issue" remark. If you would expound on your thought a bit, I'd appreciate it. —RP88 04:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't see the problem. "derogatory action in relation to the Work" is not permitted on any Wikimedia projects anyway. "critcism" is quite a different issue. So drawing horns on Bill Gate's head will no longer be permitted in v3.0, big loss.--Konstable 08:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

what if I wanted to use the photo in order to demonstraight erros with photos. Suppose I edited to up the grain?Geni 19:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry but your grammar is too dreadful for me to understand what you are trying to say. Editing images is still permitted and demonstrating errors in someone's work is not "derogatory", if that's what you meant. --Konstable 04:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

what if the errors were not original?Geni 23:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a general misunderstanding that the CC 3.0 licenses are including a new "moral right" for authors, but this is not the meaning or purpose of that clause as I understand it.

In many jurisdictions the moral rights exist, and what the CC license attempts to do is minimize the impact of that by disclaiming it as far as possible and acknowledging it otherwise. As I understand it, simply pretending that the moral rights law does not exist at all can _invalidate the license_ in some jurisdictions. Simply ignoring or defying the law would make the license perhaps completely invalid.

Greg Maxwell's concern is more subtle: that by acknowledging the legal situation, the license may transform a statutory requirement into, additionally, a contractual requirement. I have no opinion about that, but I suppose it will vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and at some point we are not qualified to prejudge that.

I think we can trust the *goal* of CC (to minimize the harmful impact of such clauses) and hope that each local license porting effort does a good job.--Jimbo Wales 01:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I can trust that CC is good, and better than bad.

But. They're not all about the free content. We are, so that's an immediate source of problems.

And their intent is nice, but it's not the letter of the licence — whereby we have stupid confusion such that some versions of CC by-sa 3.0 are free licenses and some aren't, with onerous codification of moral rights that are disjoint with copyright, and default anyway in the countries affected. Well done CC.

And then you have wikis using licenses like by-nc-nd that are nonsensical in a wiki context - thinking a No Derivatives license doesn't contradict the whole idea of text anyone can edit, because it's Creative Commons.

I have had a real life example of this just yesterday. See my recent email to commons-l about Channel 4 FourDocs. Their words: "We'd love our stuff on Wikipedia. It's all Creative Commons!" It's CC by-nc-nd. ARGH.

The Creative Commons confusion factor is (a) real (b) a serious problem for us right now in getting content freed. Their jawdropping idiocy in making some CC by-sa 3.0 licenses free content and others not actually makes this much worse than before.

Stallman was right. Again. - David Gerard 14:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The above appears tangential. It's not meant to be. The essential points are:

1. CC's goals are not our goals. We must examine their licenses as closely as anyone's.
2. CC is claiming to be the new model that's an alternative to all rights reserved. This is not free content, and that is causing us serious problems right now. We need to actively work with CC to discourage this sort of thing, because their arseclownery with the 3.0 licenses is actively damaging to our interests - David Gerard 14:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been following this discussion without comment, but I tend to agree with those who are opposed to the "non-free" versions of the CC 3.0 licenses. Jimbo makes some interesting points, however, to quote: ...the license may transform a statutory requirement into, additionally, a contractual requirement. I have no opinion about that.... This is the entire problem. Once the license creates a contractual requirement that is non-free, the entire license becomes non-free. Sure, the licenses may be required to comply with the laws of the locality they are designed for, but that shouldn't matter from a commons perspective, especially since it is hosted in the U.S. We should not allow any of the non-free versions. If the individual language Wikipedias want to use them, that seems reasonable, but I would exclude them from the commons for the same reason we exclude U.S. fair use images. I also agree that we can't just accept a license because we like CC. That's rediculous and all licenses should be judged on their own merits.

All of that said, the solution in my mind is to require that they use a compatible license in addition to the non-free license in order to stay on the commons. For example, requiring a multi-license to, say, the U.S. version and to the local version with the non-free clauses. This allows the image to stay free for project-wide purposes while allowing it to comply with local law when used on the language wikipedia for which such a license is needed to comply with local law. -- Ram-Man 15:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

While I believe CC-BY-3.0-Unported, CC-BY-3.0-US, CC-BY-SA-3.0-Unported, and CC-BY-SA-3.0-US to all be free licences (and have argued strenously so, above), if Commons decides they are non-free I oppose some sort of special multi-licensing treatment for them - they should be treated like all other non-free licenses. Furthermore, if, for example, Commons decides that just CC-BY-3.0-US and CC-BY-SA-3.0-US are free (due to their lack of the controversial moral rights clause) I'd actually be mildly reluctant to include them in the list of acceptable licenses due to the confusion that might be engendered by accepting some 3.0 jurisdictions, but not others (there is enough confusion already with -NC being unacceptable).

In that vein, if the presence of a moral rights clause is sufficient for CC-BY-3.0-Unported and CC-BY-SA-3.0-Unported to be considered non-free, Commons should give serious consideration to reviewing and possibly deprecating the CC-2.0 and CC-2.5 jurisdiction licenses that include similar moral rights clauses. It might be painful to remove images from Commons, but it is better in the long run to get this right. —RP88 16:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you in all respects except for the comparison of multi-licensing to other non-free licenses. Jimbo was right on above when he stated that these country specific licenses may be the only legal option in those countries. Using the unported or U.S.A. license may be legally invalid. However, when the country specific license is allowed, albiet non-free in other countries, it serves to disclaim or limit those provisions in that country, thus making it as free as allowed by law. Except for stating the provisions already provided by local law, the license is otherwise entirely free, and should be allowed because it doesn't make a license more unfree than it would otherwise be. Unless I read that comment wrong, this is what I understand his point to be. The comparison with other non-free licenses doesn't apply unless the only "non-free" aspect is this type of moral rights clause. I disagree with him in that I don't think we should allow it by itself, since it is not useful project-wide. But of course I have no issue if the commons bans them altogether because the multi-licensing idea isn't prefered. -- Ram-Man 18:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Are saying that licenses that contain moral rights clauses should be allowed, but only be permitted to be used by citizens of countries that grant strong moral rights, if so, shouldn't CC-BY-3.0-Unported be permitted in order than a citizen of France or Germany can choose to use it? I think Commons should be hesitant to adopt a policy that limits uploaders to using only a subset of the available licenses, based on their country of origin. For example, are you saying that, as a citizen of the U.S., I should be not be allowed to upload images I create using the CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE license (which has a moral rights clause)? —RP88 19:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

See my comments below. As for your specific example, in my opinion you should not be allowed to use the CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE exclusively because it is unfree in the U.S. Ram-Man 20:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

An important point must be made. You asked if the CC-BY-3.0-Unported would be acceptable. The answer is a surprising "no". This is not the same as multi-licensing. As pointed out by Gmaxwell in a post above, one must accept the unported license and make modifications under those terms in order to release it under the local license. As a result, merely copying it will not be sufficient to release it under the CC-BY-3.0-US. As a result, it cannot be considered a free license. With multi-licensing, one can choose to make the initial copy under the preferrable terms. Still, reading the discussions above, it isn't clear what happens if one violates the moral rights of an image licensed under the "unported" terms in a jurisdiction that does not have moral rights. I'd like to see more discussion on this issue. Ram-Man 21:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Unless it proves hopelessly confusing in practice, surely requiring a free licence as well as one of the nonfree licenses should be viable. Unless the citizens of such countries are not legally able to agree to any free licenses whatsoever, in which case we can't accept their contributions anyway - David Gerard 20:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that moral rights clauses be allowed by themselves, as this would defeat the purpose of project-wide usability. Under current commons policy, the only justification for allowing said contributions is if at least one free license is adhered to. To me, that means they have to use a license without a moral rights clause. Now this is not to stop them from multi-licensing using a compatible license. This is the first issue. The second issue is a practical one: this may be such a confusing thing that it may not even be worth the bother, in which case we should just flat out not allow it at all, unless someone is legalistically saavy enough to figure it out on their own. The third issue has been alluded to by both David Gerard and Jimbo in that it is possible that contributions from those countries cannot possibly be free to the satisfaction of the commons. In this case, we cannot allow their contributions, regardless of the license used, free or not and they can only contribute directly to a Wikipedia in the country in question, subject to the local Wikipedia policy. Ram-Man 20:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

After reading Jimbo's comment, I had some thoughts on this comment:

"...the license may transform a statutory requirement into, additionally, a contractual requirement. I have no opinion about that, but I suppose it will vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and at some point we are not qualified to prejudge that." (emphasis added)

Another problem that I thought of is if someone in the U.S. decides to release their image under the German license so that they can add a contractual requirement for moral rights. Now since the license was released under U.S. jurisdiction, any "infringer" in the U.S. would also then be in the same jurisdiction. There are some examples above similar to where someone from Germany uses the German license and someone in another country like the U.S. violates the moral rights. The argument in that case was that due to jurisdictional reasons, it wouldn't matter. But in my scenario, the jurisdiction is the same. As a result, there is an enforceable contractual requirement created where one would otherwise not exist. Thus, you have a non-free license being created due to the terms of the license alone, not due to any additional laws. Now, it is clearly unreasonable to require verification that the country of origin matches the license used, so as a result, we simply cannot have this. Jimbo's premiss that we can simply ignore this because of a jurisdictional reason is wrong. In the above case, I have eliminated jurisdictional differences in a jurisdiction where none of these moral rights would exist. At this point I would oppose the commons accepting any license other than the U.S. version of the 3.0 CC licenses, and perhaps also the unported license if it can be determined that it is acceptable after more discussion. Also, if some of the 2.0 CC licenses contain similar moral rights clauses, I would recommend ceasing to allow them and perhaps removing existing ones. -- Ram-Man 17:20, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

My example neglected the line in the (unported) license that said "Except...as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law...". In the example it would not apply to the unported license, since U.S. law permits this usage. I cannot read the German version, so I don't know how its wording would apply in this case. It is still not clear, however, what happens if the licensor is in Germany and a licensee in the U.S. agrees contractually to the German terms. It would seem to me that the moral rights clause would be interpreted contractually in a U.S. court under what they would mean in German law, because that is what both parties agreed to, since the U.S. law does not explicitly preclude agreeing to those additional terms, as far as I know. -- Ram-Man 17:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to see a real-worldcommons example of what this might be about, take a look at what is currently discussed on the Commons:Village_pump#Distortion_of_the_information_:_an_example. An image by User A of a well-known German soccer trainer was graphically manipulated and then uploaded to Commons by User B. The resulting image (the right one on the above mentioned page) is clearly derogatory for the depicted person and could also be damaging for the original photographer (here called User A). Though this case resulted from a simple (bad) joke, there have been other cases where an image of a person was “modified” with malicious intent (and consequently even used to displace original images in wikipedia articles). In all such cases the photographer of the original image IMHO should have a sort of prerogative to request the deletion of such an image. Otherwise few people will be willing to upload any more portrait images to Commons. -- Túrelio 17:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

This may perhaps not be a moral rights issue but another issue altogether, since it deals with a portrait. Due to privacy and defamation concerns, the issues with the subject of the photograph may not apply to this discussion. However, this example is a good indication of where moral rights play into affect for User A. Neglecting the legal issues with defamation of the subject (and related attack image policies), User B should otherwise have the freedom to do such manipulations with respect to copyright. Under a German CC 3.0 license, such modifications may not be allowed but would be under a U.S. CC 3.0 license. We should not accept the Germon CC license for this reason. Ram-Man 18:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

You're right that the subject's reputation isn't protected by moral rights, just the author's. In particular, I don't think these modifications are forbidden by CC 3.0 Unported, however in some jurisdictions (in particular Germany or France) User A might be able to demand that any reference to his name as the creator of the original work be removed wherever User B's picture is displayed. Since the German CC 3.0 license hasn't been written yet, it is pointless to speculate what it might prohibit. With regards to your last point, are you seriously suggesting we should eject the hundreds of CC-DE images from Commons just because the CC 2.0 DE license contains a moral rights clause? —RP88 19:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to assume that if the CC-2.0-DE licenses have moral rights that the CC-3.0-DE license would as well, however, you are right that it is all speculation at this point. Now, as for whether or not we eject CC-2.0-DE licenses, that's not a matter than I can state for sure. I only raise it as an area that we should look into. I do not understand German or German copyright law, so I can't tell if the license describes moral rights that cause it to become a non-free license. If it is free, then there is no issue. But assuming that it is determined that the CC-2.0-DE licenses are non-free, then in that case, yes, I would recommend that we eliminate them from the commons and perhaps move them to the German Wikipedia where they may be acceptable. A non-free license is non-free: it doesn't matter if we have a one or a thousand images. Non-free licensed images, like various NC licenses, have no part here at the commons. Of course, simply mass deleting images may not be the best solution either. The commons is not be legally liable for future modifications made by others, so we could contact authors to see if they would be willing to relicense, or even compromise and not allow future images under that license. -- Ram-Man 20:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that if the CC-2.0-DE license is non-free, then these images should be removed. The question is, what good would asking for a relicense do? The whole reason CC-2.0-DE includes a moral rights clause is that the CC lawyers were concerned that if a German were to use a license which didn't acknowledge moral rights the license would actually be invalid, meaning that any use or derivative created could legally be treated like a copyright violation. If German users can't disclaim their moral rights, we might have to either let them use contracts that recognize their moral rights or forbid them from submitting content to Commons altogether. Even worse, since the copyright laws in most jurisdictions around the world (with the notable exception of the US) grant creators moral rights, we conceivably might find that a consequence of treating moral rights as an impermissible license restriction is that only those in the US and a few other jurisdictions would be permitted to submit content to Commons. —RP88 20:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Has the point been raised yet that the CC licenses allow free migration between the jurisdiction-specific ones and the generic one? See 4.b, "You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under: (i) the terms of this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) either the Creative Commons (Unported) license or a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License." Doesn't this effectively this issue moot?--Eloquence 18:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

To the best of myknowledge and understanding only derivatives can change. Verbatim copies stay under the same license. Furthermore, it would appear the author of the derivative is still bound by the license he receives even if it allows him to distribute under a more permissive license. As such, I don't think we can say that the issue is moot. I wish it were, then the license would only be confusing and misleading which is better than being outright bad.

If it was the case that the requirements could be circumvented with a painless license swap, it would render the entire change a pointless terminology game which would likely offend the sensibilities of any court.

Regarding Jimbo's comment above, I think I'd largely agree if I didn't think that he was incorrect on the factual details. For example, "what the CC license attempts to do is minimize the impact of that by disclaiming it as far as possible", which I can only see as true if we define 'as far as possible' to be not at all. Even the human readable form claims "Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights." Considering how little the human readable forms of the license say about the operation of the license, that this was chosen to be a primary bullet says a lot in my view. Even the US port of the license preserves this text, although in a modified form. Neither the US nor the Generic appear to do much of anything to disclaim moral rights that I can see. I would support a license which maximally disclaimed most moral rights, and only permitted to the extent necessary to keep the license from being ruled invalid.

I'm well aware of the concerns related to how moral rights interact with free licenses in some jurisdictions. A worst case doomsday scenario, where it was determined that the rights permitted under free content licenses were moral rights violations, would result in works from those jurisdictions being unavailable for the creation of derivatives, and derivatives created in such jurisdictions potentially not being legal. From the perspective of promoting truly Free Content, I'm not sure that what CC-*-3.0 provides us with is an improvement. The general approach appears to discriminate against a broad class of less defensible forms of use in order to strengthen the case for works which would not fall into those classes. While I'm sure that the folks who drafted the language thought it a reasonable and pragmatic compromise, I consider it a short sighted abandonment of the fundamental mission. It just simply isn't a free content license if it discriminates against classes of derivatives. It might be the case that the Creative Commons doesn't believe that an international free content license is possible in the fact of moral rights, but if that's the case they should stop claiming to have one. --Gmaxwell 19:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It's true that the CC-3.0-US license doesn't disclaim moral rights, in fact, it doesn't mention moral rights at all. With a single jurisdictional exception, all Creative Commons licenses leave moral rights unaffected (just like the GFDL). The exception is Canada. Because it is legal to waive certain moral rights in Canada, the Canadian jurisdiction CC licenses waive the more exotic of the moral rights granted to Canadian authors. Your final point is interesting - given that in some jurisdictions judges take an extremely dim view of contracts which ignore moral rights, is it even possible to craft an international free content license that doesn't recognize moral rights? —RP88 19:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Gmaxwell's point in one of the posts was that it doesn't leave moral rights unaffected because by mentioning them explicitly and not waiving them, the moral rights then become part of the contractual obligations. Waiving those rights in Canada is laudable, but doesn't really help us solve the overall issue. If moral rights language is required and an international free content license not possible, then we have issues that I am certainly not qualified to resolve. I would have thought that simply stating in the license that such rights are maintained unless they can be legally waived in the enforced jurisdiction would seem like a reasonable solution, or alternatively that moral rights are subject to the specific jurisdiction that the violation occurs in, but perhaps the judges don't even like this. As it states now in the unported license, if someone from a country with strict moral rights publishes an image and someone from the U.S. violates those rights, then the license mentions that "applicable laws" apply, but it isn't clear to me which laws are applicable. Would a U.S. court treat the license as a contract with those stricter moral rights attached? If so, then the unported license is unfree. -- Ram-Man 20:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Gmaxwell's concern is clear and well articulated, although I disagree. I'm not sure why CC didn't include some kind of blanket "I waive all my moral rights, to the extent permitted by law." I suppose I could dig back through their archives to see if I can find their reasoning. With regard to applicable laws, as mentioned above, the CC-3.0-Unported license explicitly contains a clause that specifies "These rights and subject matter take effect in the relevant jurisdiction in which the License terms are sought to be enforced" - if someone from a country with strong moral rights tries to enforce the moral rights clause in a U.S. court then it is U.S. law that controls and since U.S. laws permit these activities, they have no legitimate cause of action. I'd argue that this places no non-free limitations on U.S. citizens (although, admittedly, the lack of a legitimate cause of action doesn't prevent someone from still sueing, and the language is confusing enough that someone might think they are in the right, despite not having a legitimate cause of action.) —RP88 22:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. That wording would seem to imply what you are saying. So basically then, the CC-3.0-unported and -US licenses are probably ok to use. It is not clear what other licenses are ok, if any. I am also still wary of using the CC-2.0-DE license. Ram-Man 12:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Gmaxwell, I'm curious, you mention that CC-3.0-US doesn't disclaim moral rights. Is this something that concerns you? As far as I can tell, none of the free-licenses currently approved on Commons make any attempt to disclaim moral rights other than CC-2.0/2.5-Canada. Is this something you'd like to see added to the GFDL? —RP88 22:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has been dormant for a week or so now. Some people have suggested that we should wait to see what other groups (and Debian in particular) have to say. There is one clause that the Debian/CC committee did not like related to the lack of parallel distribution language in the anti-DRM clause. However, the GFDL -- which is free by a vote of the project -- has an even stronger version of the same language so many, including myself, find it unreasonable to imagine that the CC 3.0 licenses are non-free for this reason. I was on the Debian/CC negotiation committee and the issues of moral rights was not as a barrier to the freedom of the licenses in our discussions. It is only in effect in juridictions with moral rights and (IMHO) seems sufficiently restrained. There's been a stronger argumetn from CC that it is necessary to maintain the enforceability of other more attractive aspects of the licenses. I'm not a fan of moral rights but these licenses seems obviously free to me upon reflection. I have run into an experience this week where I was prevented from uploading a CC BY-SA 3.0 licensed image to Commons. Let's please put this issue to rest. —Benjamin Mako Hill 21:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, given discussion is dormant, I think we should try and raise awareness. As this boils down to a simple issue a straw poll may be a worthwhile endeavour. If both sides of the debate agree to that, we should formulate it carefully and try and get as broad a group commenting as possible.--Nilfanion 21:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I seem to recall that Debian rejected pure GFDL.Geni 11:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The only mention that I saw anyone on Debian legal make regarding the moral rights clause seemed to indicate that they thought the the term either was a no-op, or that it would have a chilling effect on derivatives created with the express purpose of criticizing the original. They then seemed to dismiss the concern on the basis of such derivatives being undesirable. I do not believe that this is indicative of the sort of careful consideration that I would normally expect from them. We have created critical derivatives on a number of occasions for the purpose of highlighting flaws in a work in order to encourage improvements. I don't think we can accept any license which discriminates against a valid nature of use in that manner. If indeed the clause is a no-op, then then it isn't an issue, but the impression I got is that no one really thinks it is a no-op, and certainly the Creative Commons would insist that it isn't.

I think it's also important to note that this clause was written many months ago and several public drafts were released yet this text was omitted from all the public drafts that I saw. It appears that this important change was being intentionally swept under the rug.

Mako, I expect that I'll see you Saturday, so perhaps we can discuss this more then? --Gmaxwell 12:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I have read the various opinions on the matter and I think that we should accept the CC3 licenses tentatively. We really have so many questionable license tags on commons, and CC3 is, if at all, so much less problematic than most of them, that we should after the already too long delay move on and permit them, despite of the minor flaw that an affirmation of morality rights is not clearly identified as such. --Rtc

"We really have so many questionable license tags on commons, and CC3 is, if at all, so much less problematic than most of them..."—argh! If we have questionable license tags, the way to solve the problem is not by having more of them. I too am disappointed by the unported 3.0 version of the CC licenses; as for my substantive reasons why, I would only repeat what Gmaxwell and David Gerard have said, and they've said it pretty well above.

I do believe that the intent is good, but what it actually says is what we must be concerned with. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 23:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

We won't solve any problem by doing nothing, though. I suggest that we accept the CC3 licenses in one week if no substantial progress has been made until then. --Rtc 09:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I personally support the cc3.0 license, per Jimbo Wales. However, since it is still under discussion, I don't yet think it should be added as a license in the drop down list on the upload page, or be recommended to use on the help page, FAQ or First Step. / Fred Chess 10:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The language is not intended to introduce moral rights where none exist (which is basically only the U.S.) -- "Except ... as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law" -- e.g., in the U.S. mutilation (or whatever) is permitted because there is no right of integrity that prohibits it. In retrospect wording like "In those jurisdictions in which the right of integrity exists, and except ..." would have made this more obvious. We will put this in the hopper for 4.0, which hopefully is a very long way off. However, I do not see how 3.0 can reasonably thought to endanger the commons (generic and Wikimedia Commons in particular) as it does not attempt to add any restriction beyond what is inherent in each jurisdiction's moral rights or lack thereof. Note that I work for CC but am not a lawyer and this is not a legal opinion. Mike Linksvayer 02:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Reading Mike Linksvayer I think that the logic is "right". Saying that "as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law" make those right stricto sensus waived. First thing I learned about the law from school is what the law doesn't prohibit is permited. So if the law "doesn't state anything" or better explicitly permit, then it's permitted. But I agree that this formulation is most of the time "dubious" adding a "For avoidance of doubt" in this section would clearly help comprehension. – Esurnir 16:20, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

CC-BY-3.0-Unported and GFDL compatibility

A related point which I didn't see addressed in the above discussion, forgive me if I missed it: until now, CC-BY licenses have been regarded as one-way compatible with the GFDL, as CC-BY did not impose any restrictions or requirements that are not also required by the GFDL. Given that the new "moral rights" clause in CC-BY-3.0-Unported has no analogue in the GFDL, does this compatibility no longer exist? Or does the one-way compatibility now require an intermediate stop at a US license without the moral rights clause? Other questions, about the CC-BY-2.0-DE license, about project compatibility, etc., follow from this line of thought, but all boil down to variations on these two themes. --CComMack 16:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the FSF, the CC-BY licenses are not compatible with the GFDL [2]. Probably because of the unfree anti-DRM clause, which is broader than that of the GFDL. But the FSF and RMS are particularly known for their dislike of CC, so it does not have to be absolute truth. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to compare:

GFDL: You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.

CC-BY-2.0: You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access [...].

-- Bryan (talk to me) 21:53, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Narf. I hate being rude, but could you leave the license commentary to people who actually know what they are talking about? The licenses are mutually incompatible because both require derivatives to be released under the same license: For example, the GFDL stipulates that you may distribute a derivative "provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License" and CC-By-SA-2.5 "You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons Commons license that contains the same License Elements as this License". This is fundamentally what creates the incompatibility.

This is also why english Wikipedia required user contributed images under a CC license to also be dual licensed under the GFDL... unfortunately this requirement kept being simplified out of the upload page by people who had no business editing something with legal implications, and commons followed suit with no thought given to it.

CC-*-3.0 contains a compatibility clause but it explicitly requires two way or nothing, which isn't going to happen so long as creative commons remains an untrustworthy steward of the licenses (for example, the addition of the aforementioned moral rights restrictions).

The statement about the anti-drm clause is completely bogus fud: the only notable people who have complained about the GFDL's anti-drm clause are a tiny number of very loud people on debian-legal, and the entire debian project recently held a vote and decided that there was no merit to their concern. It should also be noted that they had the same complaint about the CC drm clause, and debian has not yet voted to permit such licenses... though there is no doubt that they would were a vote raised about it.--Gmaxwell 23:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

If I read it correctly we are talking about the Creative Commons Attribution, without ShareAlike ;) -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on [Foundation-l].

2007-06, thread 12: "Decision on Creative Commons 3.0". -- Jeandré, 2007-06-03t09:38z

As I'm subscribed to too many mailing lists already, I'll just add a small comment here: I can't understand why some licenses are considered free when the copyright holder is allowed to excercise all of his economic rights; and why is it that just mentioning some inalianable moral rights makes a license unfree. Samulili 19:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)