CCi Brazil List

Project Lead: Ronaldo Lemos da Silva Júnior

• License draft.
• English explanation of substantive legal changes.
• Post a message.
• Subscribe to the discussion.
• Read the discussion archives.

More about Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), founded in 1944, is the leading Brazilian academic institution in the fields of Economics, Public and Business Administration. Being a non-profit institution, its mission is to expand the frontiers of knowledge and to contribute to the country’s social and economic development.

Since the 70’s, FGV has been active in the field of legal education, especially in connection with Economics and Business. Recently, FGV created its own law school at Rio de Janeiro (FGV Direito Rio). From its creation, the Law School has been playing an important role as an interlocutor in policy-making, as well as in the transformation of legal studies in Brazil.

One of its most prominent concentration areas is Law & Technology, where the School cooperates closely with the government and with private entities, aiming to foster the development of the Brazilian information society. In 2003, FGV’s Law School organized together with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School the I-Law Program, bringing it for the first time to Latin America.

More information: http://www.fgv.br/

CCi United States List

Project Lead: John Palfrey, Phillip Malone

There are currently no email discussion lists for the US project. The creation of United States jurisdiction-specific Creative Commons licenses is a far simpler project than “porting” or adapting the CC generic licenses to many other countries. This is because the generic licenses, while jurisdiction-agnostic, are based in many respects on the U.S. Copyright Act and other U.S. laws, are already written in American English and were originally drafted by American lawyers.

As a result, only one relatively minor, technical change was made to the generic licenses in order to make them jurisdiction specific to the United States. Paragraph 5 of the licenses, “Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer,” was revised to make clear that the Licensor offers the work only to the extent of any rights that the Licensor holds in it, and to add “marketable title” to the list of implied warranties that the Licensor is disclaiming. Because of some uncertainty in American case law regarding the extent to which various implied warranties actually would attach to Creative Commons licenses, and to which any such warranties can be disclaimed, these changes are meant to provide Licensors with the maximum possible protection from any possible liability in this area.

Since the only current difference between the generic CC licenses and the new, United States jurisdiction-specific ones is this minor, technical improvement, we determined that the typical process porting setting up an email discussion list for public comment and debate on the initial license draft, followed by preparation of a second draft based on comments those would not be useful or necessary in this case.

The Berkman Center

The Berkman Center is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. We represent a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace.

We investigate the real and possible boundaries in cyberspace between open and closed systems of code, of commerce, of governance, and of education, and the relationship of law to each. We do this through active rather than passive research, believing that the best way to understand cyberspace is to actually build out into it.

Our faculty, fellows, students, and affiliates engage with a wide spectrum of Net issues, including governance, privacy, intellectual property, antitrust, content control and electronic commerce. Our diverse research interests cohere in a common understanding of the Internet as a social and political space where constraints upon inhabitants are determined not only through the traditional application of law, but, more subtly, through technical architecture (”code”).

The Berkman Center’s Clinical Program in Cyberlaw provides high-quality, pro-bono legal services to appropriate individuals, small start-ups, non-profit groups and government entities regarding cutting-edge issues of the Internet, new technology and intellectual property.

CCi Canada List

Project Leads:  Marcus Bornfreund, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, and Olivier Charbonneau

• License draft (PDF).
• English explanation of substantive legal changes (PDF).
• Post a message.
• Subscribe to the discussion.
• Read the discussion archives.

More About the Law & Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law

The Law & Technology Program at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law was founded in 1998 and is the leading program of its kind in Canada. Providing specialized courses, practical experience and the opportunity to conduct innovative research, the program covers both the graduate and undergraduate level. From its location in Canada’s technology capital, the University of Ottawa Law & Technology Program acts as a central source of legal information and expertise for policy-making and judicial determination in Canada and has been instrumental in producing technology law practitioners that now occupy all facets of the technology law field.

Acknowledgments

CC Canada would like to thank and acknowledge the follow individuals for their contributions and support of the Canadian project. For more information on the past and present team, please visit CC Canada’s People page.

Justin Barca : Webmaster (Spring / Summer 2006)
Marty Finestone : Licence Drafter / Researcher (Winter 2004 / Fall 2005)
Philippe Gauvin : Researcher (Fall 2003)
Jeremy Hessing-Lewis : Volunteer (Fall 2005 – Winter 2008)
Ketai Hu : Technical Administrator (Summer 2004 – Winter 2006)
Ian Kerr : Licence Drafter / Researcher (Summer 2004 – Spring 2006)
Sabine Minsky : Volunteer (Summer 2006)
Monique Moreau : Intern (Winter 2005)
Tina Piper : Project Lead (Fall 2005 – Spring 2009)
Catherine Thompson : Volunteer (Summer 2005)
Michael Yang : Licence Drafter (Winter 2004)