IANAL, blah blah, but as far as stopping people making money from your CC protected stuff, it seems to me that court proved cases and precedence don't matter so much.
From what I hear, it's very very rare for *any* traditional copyright disputes to go to court because of the expense - and those that do go to court are because of a bitter argument over millions of $$. So it would seem to me that we will have to wait a *very* long time to see CC get its day in court and set actual precedence. That doesn't diminish its power, though - The three things that would scare an infringing commercial company into backing down in small $ infringement cases, as in Josh Wolf's case, are 1) a CC notice's intention and language are pretty clear, so the infringer's lawyers are going to be that much warier of fighting - it won't be a simple clear-cut case; 2) *everyone* is afraid of legal costs, not least a corp with $800/hr Park Ave lawyers, and it's cheaper to settle for a few hundred or thousand just in case the other guy has a pro bono issue lawyer or is angry or rich enough (like Adam Curry) to go some or all of the distance for the sake of principle; 3) someone infringing CC can only really continue their fight on grounds of legal technicalities, or by using their deep pockets to frighten the little guy - not on principle. they know they're wrong in principle, and I'd guess most CEOs and lawyers would judge that it's cheaper to pay up than to risk the damnation of bloggers and other web communities for being such an obvious corporate bad guy. Being a big record company throwing your weight around to screw a big pop star for copyright is 'Entertainment News' and probably goes down well with shareholders who want you to defend your IP - but being a corporation throwing your weight around to screw a Little Person who's clearly used CC looks very different, and wouldn't sit well with consumers, bloggers, journalists or investors. That's a lot of love to lose. Thus they'll always settle, I'd bet. That is, until there's something really big, where a corp has screwed up so big that it *has* to fight to the death to survive. But at that point, there'll be pro bono lawyers out there fighting for the little guy, and web campaign funds, and it'll come before a judge & jury, who'll be asked to choose between Jimmy Stewart and Mr Potter. Call me naive, but for all these reasons it seems clear to me that a CC license is as effective a legal guard-dog as you can hope for, regardless of precedence. Rupert http://www.fatgirlinohio.org http://feeds.feedburner.com/fatgirlinohio On 2 Feb 2007, at 22:59, Michael Verdi wrote: Others can chime in here if I get this wrong... Josh Wolf posted a certain video on his blog and before the Feds got a hold of it, the local TV stations ran it on the news. Josh sent them a copy of his CC license and a bill and they paid up. -Verdi On 2/2/07, T. Whid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm very, very curious... > > +++ > > Ms. Vogel states: > > [...] CC licenses are legally enforceable contracts. While I believe it's > almost *always* better to find community-based, practical, business or > technical solutions before weilding the hammer of "The Law", it shouldn't > be > forgotten that those CC licenses can be enforced if the content owner > ultimately choses to do so. > > +++ > > Is there any precedent yet? Has anyone infringed a CC license, been taken > to > court and lost? > > Plus, Mr. Lessig has said over and over that one of the reasons he created > CC was because tho there is fair use and etc theoretically available to > independent producers but the practical economics of it make it impossible > for small producers to fight for these rights. If one has to take a corp > to > court to defend one's CC licenses, don't these same economic restrictions > come into play? > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
