Anatomy of a CC License
16
Introduction
Creative Commons licenses were carefully crafted to make them legally enforceable in countries around the world.
Learning Objectives
- Describe the state of Creative Commons case law
- Explain the potential benefit of seeking non-legal resolutions to disagreements
Big Question – Why it Matters
Creative Commons licenses are legal tools that build on copyright law. As legal instruments, CC licenses need to stand up in court. What happens when there is a court case that involves Creative Commons licenses? What happens if someone is violating the CC license you applied to a work, but you do not want to file a lawsuit? What happens if a licensor complains about how you have attributed them when reusing their work?
To date and to our knowledge, no court around the world that has heard a case involving a CC license (of which there have been very few) has questioned the validity or enforceability of a CC license. Thanks to the CC community, most disputes connected to CC licenses are resolved outside of court and often without involving lawyers.
Personal Reflection – Why it Matters to You
Whether you or your organization is using CC licenses, or you are advising others in the use of CC licenses, you want to be confident that the terms of the CC licenses are enforceable. If someone misuses your work, what recourse do you have? What would you do if you found out someone was using your CC licensed photograph in a magazine without giving you credit, for example?
Acquiring Essential Knowledge
Most people who reuse CC licensed works try to comply with the license conditions. But whether well meaning or not, sometimes people get it wrong.
If someone is using a CC licensed work without giving attribution or otherwise following the license, their right to use the work ends automatically as soon as they violate the license terms. Unless the person using the work received separate permission or is relying upon fair use or some other exception to copyright, they are potentially liable for copyright infringement. Read this FAQ about what happens when someone does not comply with a CC license. Read this FAQ for a look at what happens from the perspective of a reuser.
Note this important difference between the newest version of CC licenses (version 4.0) and prior versions:
Under version 4, users of CC-licensed works who come into compliance with license terms within 30 days of discovering they were in violation of the terms have their rights under the license automatically reinstated.
Sometimes these types of disputes can end up in court. Over the course of CC’s history, to our knowledge, there have been very few legal disputes and decisions involving CC legal tools. Each court that has rendered a decision has made it without questioning the enforceability of the CC license at issue.
Those judicial decisions have been in a variety of places around the world, including Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Israel, and the U