Monday, May 07, 2018

CC-licensed or not? you be the judge

A knitting pattern I'm using comes with a CC license and license terms that seem distinctly un-CC.  For contracts folks out there, what license do I have?

It says CC-BY-NC-SA, but then "What does this copyright notice mean?" purports to explain "You do not have permission to make copies for anyone else (including your mother, mother-in-law, children, or friends).... [Y]ou may not publish anything based on these patterns without prior permission. And finally, it means you may not use these patterns to make any items for sale, even if you've made minor modifications of the patterns."  None of these limits are entailed by NC-SA.  (I think even the items for sale part isn't, inasmuch as you wouldn't be charging for the pattern but for the item.)

I take it that if the licensor were sophisticated, it would be uncomplicated to treat the "what does this mean?" notice as irrelevant, because it's not true license language, which is above.  Does the fact that the licensor clearly doesn't understand the CC license she's using change matters?

1 comment:

Pamela Chestek said...

My favorite mental game is whether, despite what the pattern says, I could sell articles made from the pattern. I've seen only one pattern where I thought the finished product was copyrightable, https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-beekeepers-quilt