TechnoLlama wrote about a Spanish Creative Commons case:
A Spanish court in Pontevedra has ruled in favour of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) against a café named Direccion000. SGAE initiated action against the cafe to claim royalties for de public performance of music in the locale, while the owners claimed that they did not have to pay because they were only using â??free musicâ?? under Creative Commons licences.
The SGAE could show that the cafe was not entirely truthful in their claims. The music they were playing included that of members of the SGAE.
What is more interesting is that the court apparently commented on the CC licenses in the decision â??â?¦it is worth to point out that the document presented by the defendants-appellants as a licence for free use of music does not constitute anything other than a mere informative leaflet about its own content, lacking any form of signature, and therefore bereft of legal value whatsoeverâ??.
OK – let me come clean from the beginning: I am not a Spanish lawyer. But I find it incredibly hard to believe that the Spanish legal position on licenses & contracts is such that they need to be completed with the formality of the signature to be valid.
Additionally I would also like the court to explain what the value of a “informative leaflet” is under contract law.
OH NOT AGAIN… Where did these people go to law school?
The Creative Commons licensing system does not really require the status of a license to be able to survive. Under legal principles the fact that the creator has stated in an “informative leaflet” that she will not enforce her rights under copyright law is enough for me to follow the permissions and conditions stated in the Creative Commons documentation.
If I follow the documentation and the creator attempts to sue me for copyright violation (therefore claiming that the Creative Commons is not a license) the courts would naturally understand my actions as being carried out with permission.
An analogy. Supposing a theme park which charges admission puts up a sign that admission on 1 January 2007 is free. If they (despite their previous idea) attempted to sue all visitors who did not pay admission on this date for trespassing the courts would hardly support the claims of the theme park.
Go and read:
Charles Fried Contract as Promise (We enforce contracts because they are promises â?? and we have a moral obligation to keep our promises).