My recent issues with content theft have renewed my interest in copyright law.
I was using the Creative Commons in the past, but removed it again – possibly when I was doing a cleanup.
TJ McIntyre mentioned recently that there was work being done on the CC license within the context of Irish law. This could be very interesting for Irish bloggers, but will it make any difference to the indifference of some people?
The current draft content may be found here
Would Creative Commons Help?
They would have taken it anyway.
Hi Michele
As I said in my brief comment to your previous mail, this is a straightforward breach of copyright, with all of the consequences following according to the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000. The benefit of a CC license is that it clarifies what can be used, and when, and under what conditions. Those are good things in principle, which is why I use one on my blog. And they may be sufficient to encourage you to use one again. But a CC licence would have made no difference here, as you had already clarified matters in correspondence with them. In other words, the kinds of things that might be unclear that a CC licence would clarify in general you had already clarified in your email to them.
Eoin.
Eoin
I think I’ll be looking at the CC license moving forward, but as you said it wouldn’t make any difference in this instance, as they obviously don’t respect copyright
Thanks for your input
Michele
a downside of a CC licence is that a lot of people seem to view them as a carte blanche to take all sorts of stuff from your site.
For example: http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2006/0713_plagiarism_i.php
The guys thought that because the site was CC, they could take the whole thing and do what they wanted with it, when in fact it was the content that was licensed, and not the design.
Apparently, it’s a common misconception that CC = Puiblic Domain
Stewart
That post is a very interesting read!
Are there other instances of this kind of misconception that you know of?
Michele
It would hardly help. Any copyrightable work is assumed to be copyright to the author if not otherwise specified, so it’s not as if they thought your articles weren’t under copyright.
Rob
Yeah, but would it help with other potential abusers?
Michele
I can’t imagine so. As I say, if they’re willing to ignore conventional personal copyright, they’ll be just as willing to ignore CC.