Weakness in Creative Commons License Can cause Unethical Exploits
During a recent informal discussions about the localization of Creative Commons licenses in Thailand some project initiators and legal advisors cursorily discussed some of the implications of such licences, and concluded that the combination of the different licenses offers sufficient flexibility as well as enough guarantees for the authors who may desire to protect their work against undesired usage.
A 'non commercial' license for example allows the work to be used non commercially only - although the definition of what constitute commercial is still loose and subject to interpretation. 'non derivative' roughly prescribes that the licensed work can only be used 'as is', and cannot be modified.
A few points however were left open for later discussion, as they are not strictly local issues:
1. With increased usage of the licenses, there is a greater need to promote education and understanding about how the creative commons work especially in developing countries.
The license provider (a private, non profit company with
Offices in Boston, Mass) and their worldwide affiliates should be responsible for making recommendations as to how to best choose a license. A lot of creatives may be too naïve about commercial law to realise that cc linceses, unless properly selected, can allow their work, or minor modifications thereof, to be commercially exploited by any company, including large global multinationals without the authors even knowing, or ever making a penny from it.
2. There is currently no mechanism in the CC to prevent 'unethical' usage of licensed work. This leaves the creators potentially open to lawsuits, when the images that they make available are used in non legal, or non clear commercial contexts - especially considering the differences in legislation from country to country
3. 'Commons' by definition means: that belongs to the public domain. However, the CC licenses are 'owned' by a private company. It is advocated that everyone licensing their work under 'creative commons', should be entitle to hold company shares, and have rights to vote when it comes to 'creative commons' administrative and legal decisions.
The question also was raised about why would the Creative Commons company with legal offices in Boston would want the draft MOU to be regulated by Californian Jurisdiction, but that was more of a side note.
Currently there is not much in a CC lincense to prevent that any (unknown) third party can legitimately use an image for something that the authors would not approve of (in an unethical marketing campaign or an unethical website, or for a scam, or even in spam email)
Now Virgin Mobile Australia and the Creative Commons 'holding' company are being sued for careless and potentially libelous usage of a creative commons licensed photograph.
http://www.out-law.com/page-8494\
While a clearcut definition with what "ethical" means is not easy to agree, it is also true that Creative Commons are still discussing what 'commercial' means, Even 'commercial' is not that straightforward as such.
Some authors feel that they are responsible to ensure that the product of their creativity and genius inherits the values and principles and behaviour intended by their creators. and advocate for new legal instruments designed to promote of creativity to adequately such as the creative commons licenses help them support such responsibility.
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