We’ve been having a behind-the-scenes debate at Troppo for some time regarding the copyright claims for material published here. The site has had a standard copyright notice since its inception way back in 2002. However, I have intended for ages to move to a Creative Commons licence which freely allows republication of material with attribution for non-commercial purposes.
As an erstwhile law student, Jacques felt that we couldn’t impose a Creative Commons licence on authors of existing posts and comments without their express permission. Nicholas and I have a rather more relaxed view about it. We think it’s highly unlikely that Troppo authors or commenters will object to Creative Commons terms, and if anyone does then they can contact us and we’ll simply remove their posts or comments. Go and have a look at the new copyright notice and the Creative Commons licence to which it refers, and contact us if you have a problem with it.
Edit by Jacques: I’ve changed the links to point to a license specifically geared to Australian copyright law.
I agree to your imposing a creative commons licence on my posts.
I’m a big fan of CC so I’m more than happy for my posts here to be so licenced.
Anybody desperate enough to republish any of my comments need fear nothing from me.
How amusing that the legal code of the Australian-flavoured license refers to US laws.
Ken, I think Jacques has the better position.
The Creative Commons licence *cannot* be applied *unless* the author specifically consents, otherwise normal copyright applies as the default – ie. no republication .
The way Creative Commons works is:-
a.) the author asserts full rights under copyright law (the default position),
b.) but grants a licence to republishers *provided* the republisher accepts *and* complies with the terms of the licence.
Unless a poster provides b.) – the licence – no republisher is safe from a copyright claim under a.) – normal copyright law.
[Just for the avoidance of doubt, I as the copyright holder on this post, hereby grant a Creative Commons licence to all persons should they wish to republish this. I do so in accordance with the new policy of this site. In any and all future posts to this site made by me the same licence will apply as implied by the new site policy. Past posts? Well you can contact me and ask permission.]
Jm
I wasn’t arguing (and wouldn’t argue) that it’s lawful to reproduce copyright work without permission, and silence doesn’t constitute permission. However, lawyers (especially in intellectual property areas, and for that matter defamation) are compelled to operate in the real world and give real world advice. In the real world it simply isn’t possible to contact even every one of the many Troppo authors from the last 5 years and seek their express permission to adopt a Creative Commons licence covering their material, let alone the thousands of commenters many of whom didn’t even leave a real email address. So what do you do in that situation?
You undertake a risk analysis. What can happen if an author or commenter objects to their work continuing to be published on a site which publishes a general Creative Commons licence that doesn’t exempt their material? Such a person could certainly obtain an injunction if they needed one. But injunctions are awarded in quite restrictive circumstances, and would be very unlikely to be awarded in a situation where all the author has to do is ask and their material will be removed. What about the possibility of damages? I suppose it’s a theoretical risk but highly unlikely that any author or commenter would suffer quantifiable recoverable damage by their work continuing to be published on a site that displays a Creative Commons licence (given that it will be removed if they ask). I simply don’t think there’s a significant risk of any such thing, in contrast to defamatory material, which we’re very careful to exclude from Troppo even at the risk of sometimes being accused of having an unduly restrictive comments policy.
Note that I’m in no sense urging or advising other bloggers necessarily to take this attitude towards copyright (indeed I hereby give all possible disclaimers in that respect – this is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such). They will need to get their own legal advice and make their own risk assessment just as Nicholas and I have made ours. Judgment calls about defamation, copyright and the like are ones that large commercial publishers have to make every day. The situation is nowhere near as acute for small Internet publishers like bloggers, even fairly visible ones like Troppo, simply because we’re much smaller targets who don’t have big pots of money. Nevertheless they’re assessments we must make if we want to publish material from diverse sources.
Obviously, I would have no objection whatsoever to any of my posts being published under a Creative Commons licence.
Same for me, Ken, and likewise over at Catallaxy (where this has never come up, so thanks for raising it).
Now back to the swotting :)
Jaques: For a license specifically geared to Australian copyright law I would have assumed it would have been helpful for the CC-crowd to have invested some tiny effort in perusing the relevant Australian laws and using them to replace the US law equivalents.
Anyway, if I had posts here I would object on the basis that you are being too restrictive. Luckily, I don’t :- )