Re: CC license on figures in specs?

On Fri, 2011-12-16 at 16:39 +0900, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> On 2011/12/16 1:37, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
[...]
> > Well, obviously I wondered about that, and, equally obviously, IANAL,
> > but I thought that a single figure was likely to be reusable under
> > fair-use _anyway_, so we might as well ask for credit, and it's a way
> > to acknowledge a contribution from the 'artist'. . .
> 
> IANAL here too, and rules and practice may well differ quite a bit among 
> countries. But from what I have observed in actual practice (e.g. how 
> reuse of figures is handled in the academic world), there is quite a bit 
> of a difference between text and figures.

And this difference is generally reflected in copyright laws in various
countries - you can reuse a certain amount (e.g. a tenth of a chapter)
of text, but not generally figures, under fair use / fair dealing laws.

Courts have generally given more leeway to non-profit and educational
than to commercial uses, even where no such difference exists directly
in copyright laws, beyond the extent of liability.

Maybe the answer for W3C is that code listings should be freely
reusable, and figures should require attribution, unless otherwise
stated. But again, although the creator may have the right to be
acknowledged, that doesn't mean they must exercise that right, so
allowing use without acknowledgement is possible if explicitly granted.

Can we get back to writing specs now? :-)

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/

Received on Friday, 16 December 2011 19:29:25 UTC