Re: Creative Commons 3.0 Public draft -- news and questions
Francesco Poli writes:
> On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 01:09:52 +0100 Stephen Gran wrote:
>
>> This one time, at band camp, Francesco Poli said:
>> > This still concerns me...
>> > I have previously discussed the issue on debian-legal, but I'm not
>> > yet convinced that this clause passes the DFSG.
>> >
>> > What I do not understand basically boils down to:
>> >
>> > How can a license (allow a licensor to) forbid an accurate credit
>> > and meet the DFSG at the same time?
> [...]
>> And why do you think this violates the DFSG? Clause 3, which you are
>> citing, says that the license must allow derived works, and must allow
>> derivates to be licensed under the same terms as the original license.
>> I see nothing in there that even remotely implies the original author
>> can't take their name out of it. Leaving aside practical issues, how
>> are you arguing that a request to remove a name either changes the
>> licensing terms or prohibits derivation?
>
> Well, it prohibits an entire class of derivative works: the ones that
> (accurately) credit the author of the original work!
The Berne Convention (section 6bis), and droit d'auteur regimes even
before ratification of the Berne Convention, allow an author to
"object to" -- presumably in court -- any modifications of his work(s)
that would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation. Who is
entitled to make the decision whether a modification meets that?
My suspicion is that, unless we assume defendants have big pockets,
the author makes the decision because it is more convenient to remove
the author's name than to test the point legally. Thus, if the author
is worried enough about attributions that they dislike (and note that
some upstream authors of software in Debian are notorious about this),
he is likely to get his way even if the license does not explicitly
require removing his name.
Michael Poole
Reply to: