The Creative Commons is effectively useless

That's the conclusion people are now arriving at after Adam Curry's recent court case in the Netherlands. A gossip rag based in that country published Curry's Flickr family photos without permission, claiming that because the Flickr page said the photos were 'public', meant that they were in the public domain.... d'oh! The lenience of the judgement is rather incredible -

Regarding the copyright claim, the judge ruled in our favour, and ordered the mag not to use my copyrighted pictures again. If they do they will be fined 1000 euros (about $1200) for each photo they use without permission.

As one commentator says -

So Creative Commons stands up in court, but this judgement means it’s effectively useless in practice

Indeed, it seems a picture may be worth a thousand words, but a song is worth a thousand pictures.

Technorati Tags: creative commons

Comments

[kosso]

very nice. nice to see it coming along. I have a similar flash based widget - basically a mini-kozopml browser (with inclusion) for blog sidebars ;)

fyi: I am coding like a mofo at present to show you all my nice little 'directory feed player' ;)

[kosso]

whooops. right comment - wrong post!

[Damien Mulley]

It all depends. Courts in the Netherlands can be quite diff to Ireland and England. A precedent is set now. I'm sure the first person to breach a CC licence would just be told off whereas anyone that does it again after a court making a ruling could get slapped hard.

[James Corbett]

Interesting point of view Damien - I certainly hope you're right.

[Josh]

good work...