Hi, Bear with me if this is off-topic, but I believe there are some issues here that are quite valid for web standards people to discuss.
I would bet that all of us on this list have copied and pasted code from websites for use in our own projects. That's how we learn the technologies we use, and is comparable to a building apprentice watching a master builder work and applying the same techniques. The Masters of CSS - and we all have our own heroes we look up to - are owed our thanks and more beer than they can possibly imbibe for their hard work. However we also have a responsibility to ourselves and our clients to protect any work that we don't want to be available free to anyone. We can't stop source code from being viewed, and so is applying a copyright (or copyleft) license to the work a valid response? Many cutting-edge standards designers are incredibly generous with their experiments in CSS and HTML, and willingly share those with the community. I have benefited countless times from the work of people such as Dave Shea, John Oxton, Andy Clarke and many others, and try to acknowledge the original sources for code I copy and use (however I'm not as good at doing this as I should be). It's a well-known saying in some circles that the first keys to wear out on a web designers keyboard are Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V :0) But can you imagine if every time someone added a box model hack to their document they added a little "Copyright Tantek Celik" comment? (The original hack, I believe, is at http://tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html). While we're a friendly, sharing, caring bunch at the moment, just how much of your code would you want to be copied before you considered it to be a breach of your intellectual property? After all, we'd come down pretty hard on someone if they ripped our entire site design off, but what if they copied 90% of our CSS or HTML and used it in a way that didn't _look_ the same. Would we flame them, sue them, or just send a polite email requesting they played a bit more fair? Anyway, there are some interesting moral and legal issues here, and if anyone wants to continue this discussion that is sailing very close (or way over, maybe) the 'off-topic' equator please mail me off-list. Regards Chris -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Carl Reynolds Sent: 27 April 2006 17:58 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WSG] Creative Commons Lachlan Hunt wrote: > Carl Reynolds wrote: > >> There is a loop-hole in the license that allows anyone to copy any >> work you publish without requiring your permission or needing to pay >> any kind of royalty. > > > Can you provide a reference to back up this claim? > Unfortunately, I don't have a link. I was discussing Creative Commons with a friend a few months ago and he pointed me to some news articles about a decision that had been made last year (I don't remember if it was Executive or Judicial). The decision involved a situation in which someone had used Creative Commons to "protect" their intellectual property and someone else had infringed on their property rights. The first person tried to recover damages and a decision was made that because of the way Creative Commons is written, the person who created the property had given away their intellectual property rights and had placed the property in the public domain. They therefore, had negated their copyright protection and had no recourse under the law. I'm sorry for this vague answer. I don't have any more specific information at this time. Carl. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ****************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
