Big legal win for free licenses

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Joichi Ito <jito () neoteny com>
> Date: August 13, 2008 7:07:33 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Big legal win for free licenses
>
> http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2008/08/13/lessighuge-and.html
>
> Big legal win for free licenses »
>
>    From Lessig
>
>    "huge and important news: free licenses upheld
>
>    So for non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important. But trust me,  
> this is huge.
>
>    I am very proud to report today that the Court of Appeals for the  
> Federal Circuit (THE "IP" court in the US) has upheld a free (ok,  
> they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing  
> to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at  
> issue was the Artistic License.) This is a very important victory,  
> and I am very very happy that the Stanford Center for Internet and  
> Society played a key role in securing it. Congratulations especially  
> to Chris Ridder and Anthony Falzone at the Center.
>
>    In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses  
> such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on  
> the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the  
> license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer.  
> This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely,  
> whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses  
> which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.
>
>    Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US  
> Court."
>
> My comments:
>
> The brief that was filed is here.
>
> When we talk to organizations that want to use Creative Commons  
> licenses, we inevitably end up in the legal department. In many  
> cases, these legal departments are, understandably, conservative and  
> they throw a lot of reasons why "it can't work" into the discussion.  
> They often create an impenetrable wall of legal mumbo jumbo that  
> often causes the management or the teams inside of these  
> organizations to give up trying to use Creative Commons licenses.
>
> This notion of whether CC licenses are just contracts which require  
> things like click-wrapped acknowledgment from the user or not hinge  
> on this distinction that has been made clear with this ruling.  
> Clarity on this point should make it significantly easier to clear  
> conservative legal departments and will hopefully make adoption that  
> much easier.
>
> Big thanks to the Stanford team and everyone involved. This is a  
> happy day.
> Tags:
>
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