On 4/10/2012 9:45 PM, Sarah wrote:
Can anyone point me to the basis of the claim that cc licences are
irrevocable? If someone were to upload an image to Flickr with a cc
non-commercial licence, then changed her mind and broadened it to
allow commercial use, Commons would not reject the image on the
grounds that the first, more restrictive, licence was irrevocable.
We would not allow a change of mind in the other direction, but
allowing any change implies that we don't, in fact, regard cc licences
as irrevocable.
I'm asking this because I've seen a couple of cases on the Commons in
the last few months where people have asked that personal images be
deleted (usually involving body parts that they uploaded when kids),
and being told no, too late, you can't change your mind. This seems
cruel and unreasonable, and so I'm wondering what the legal basis for
it is.
Sarah
A CC-By license *is* irrevocable.
By agreeing to the CC-BY license, you are agreeing to make it
irrevocable (see link that Benjamin Chen provided). That does *not* mean
* that you aren't allowed to modify your own images or
* that reusers are obligated to continue to retain your images
I've heard an argument about the downward reuse (beyond commons), i.e.,
once we have an image we're obligated to retain it so that downward
images have a chain, but I'm not at all convinced that we are legally
obligated to do that. Downward reusers can either decide that we
demonstrated a free license at the time they copied from us or they can
remove them themselves. We are in no more obligation to them than we
are to those artists that we're reusing from.
You have to weigh the consequences of losing reused images versus the
consequences of ignoring courtesy to the creative community.
In the circumstance, I think the ObiWolf situation, I sincerely believe
the retention is causing far greater harm to the creative community than
the courtesy removal would to the free culture community. And it looks
terrible for us.
Cary
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