New license drafts for version 3.0 for the CC US license and the new generic/unported license have been posted. There have been several new amendments to the licenses — mainly as a result of the discussions on the cc-licenses list, but some as a result of discussions internally and amongst CC’s international affiliates. A first round of comments to the cc-licenses list discussions was posted back at the beginning of September but the bulk of discussions took place after this posting. The issue of the DRM parallel distribution language was debated in earnest. Ultimately, however, the general sentiment on the list does not seem to favor implementation of the DRM parallel distribution language at this stage.
To briefly explain the current round of amendments:
New language has been included in the second introductory paragraph of the license to ensure that the license language is not interpreted by a court so as to require that the license be held to be a contract but rather to enable the agreement to be interpreted as a license, or in the alternative, as a contract.
Definition of Collection (new generic) & Collective Work (new US) – this definition has been tweaked to clarify that it intends to apply to all types of copyright protected materials (in the case of the new generic); and, that the definition applies to the collocation of more than one works (in the case of both licenses) rather than just three or more (in case people were confused that this was the requirement in the current license drafting).
Clause 2 (new generic) – the title has been changed to “Fair Dealing Rights” in place of “Fair Use Rights” to ensure that it is clear what is covered by this clause in the majority of jurisdictions around the world, which have fair dealing.
Clauses 4(a) & (b) (both licenses) – language has been introduced to clarify that the anti-TPM restriction does not apply to private copying, only when a work is being shared.
Clause 4(a) (both licenses) – the ShareAlike condition has been clarified to confirm that the other jurisdiction licenses under which an SA-licensed work can be relicensed must be of the same license version or later (consistent with relicensing under the same jurisdiction/generic license).
Clause 4(e) (new generic) – this clause has been substantially revised since the first draft was circulated on the list. The revisions reflect the ongoing work of the CC Working Group that has been set up to look at the issue of CC licenses and collecting societies and represents the agreed on policy for CC licenses going forward as regards the collection of collecting society royalties by CC licensors. It is designed to take into account the different systems that exist in different countries and will be reflected in the jurisdiction licenses that version to 3.0.
Clause 4(f) (new generic) – this clause has been amended to make an exception to the retention of the moral right of integrity for jurisdictions such as Japan.
Renaming the “generic” – as you can see from these license drafts, we are proposing to rename the generic to “unported.” This description reflects the terminology used by CC since the international license porting process began – we refer to the process of adapting a license for a particular jurisdiction as “porting.” It was felt that new terminology was needed to avoid giving people an inaccurate impression that the “generic” license was somehow international or more suited to online usage than the “ported” licenses. CC will be releasing by the end of the year, some guidelines to better clarify the issue of which license to select.
As noted above, these changes, for the most part, reflect list discussions and so hopefully a large amount of further discussion is not necessary and version 3.0 can be implemented shortly. However, if there are further errors or issues identified by people then the discussions will continue for as long as necessary to resolve these.