This is the third in a series of blog postings dedicated to inviting comment on possible innovations to our licenses. Posts 1a and 1b dealt with potential new license options. This post and the one to follow deal with potential refinements of our existing license texts.

The Missing Link? (Innovation 2a)

Several people have written in suggesting that we include a link-back requirement as part of the Attribution condition. We chose not to do so in our first set of licenses because we thought it would be a somewhat onerous requirement for licensees, who after all shouldn’t be held responsible for the occasional broken link or altered URL. After hearing your input, we played with some language requiring licensees, “to the extent practicable,” to link back to the copyrightholder’s site. Some of you, however, wisely noted that this may give licensees a bit too much leeway. So we’re now thinking about the language below as a possible addition to the Attribution provision:

Do you think such a requirement would significantly improve the Attribution condition? If so, how might we improve upon this language? Should the link-back requirement be its own option, or simply part of the Attribution option?