Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
<quote who="doug jensen" date="2005-03-28 05:42:49 -0700">On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 03:31:01PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: I don't think it is quite good enough that Creative Commons understands what they mean, if the users of the license don't understand as well.It is explicit in the source of the page and it's explicit (although not necessary universally unambiguous) in the graphical visualization that 99+% of people reading the page see. CC has explained clearly their position and we know that they are not trying to pull one on us. This is sloppiness, not non-freeness. Are you really arguing that a piece of text that we all know is not a part of the license renders the license itself non-free?
I'd argue that this is the case for works where the whole page has just been copied verbatim into a large blob of text and declared as being the license. (Several examples of such mis-licensed works can be found by googling a sentence from the suspect paragraph. The first example I found[1] copied the whole page, removed the colour, and kept the box around the two paragraphs. In the case of this PDF there is no 'NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE' comment, and the formatting suggests that the two paragraphs are not only part of the license, but an important part worthy of a larger font and a box).
This may have been discussed before (in which case, please forgive my ignorance), but if, as the HTML comment claims, the two paragraphs are not part of the license:
1) who are the parties that 'neither party will use the trademark "Creative Commons"... ' refers to? They're not defined at any point in the two 'not part of the license' paragraphs. This paragraph makes no sense (to me) when considered in isolation of the license.
2) what is the point of it being on the license page, when (not being part of the license) it is not binding to either the licensor or the licensee?
3) why are so many people copying them into their copyright notices? [1] - http://www.moxon.net/downloads/pdfs/travels_in_burkina_faso.pdf -- Lewis Jardine IANAL, IANADD