MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Best Sources of E-Books

cstross · 11-23-2007, 06:04 AM

A secondary point I want to clarify:

A Creative Commons license doesn't reduce or repudiate their copyright over their own work.

All it does is promise the reader that the author will refrain from suing them for breach of copyright if they make certain uses of the material.

The no-commercial-derivs license, for example -- if you download a book and merrily start selling it, your violation of the license means the author can sue your ass, just as if you did the same with a cracked DRM-d edition from a major publisher.

Nor does a CC-licensed release preclude the author from selling their own work under a different license, and treating derivatives of that sold work differently from an earlier CC release.

A Creative Commons license does not mean "this work is in the public domain and I can do what I like with it". CC was a compromise, designed to allow authors and creators to benefit commercially from their work while at the same time making copies freely available. It's a compromise -- necessitated by some brain-dead internal contradictions in copyright law as it currently exists -- and some of the edge cases are potentially very messy indeed, although on balance I think we're a lot better off for having it available as a framework.

The point I'm trying to make is, it is possible that you will occasionally see a pirate commercial edition of a work that's licensed under Creative Commons -- and equally likely that you'll see a legitimate commercial edition, too. In all cases, the first thing to do is check the publisher (if they also publish a Dead Tree edition, then it's 99% likely to be legitimate), and only if something smells funny, contact the author.

11-23-2007, 06:04 AM	#56
cstross Cynic Posts: 86 Karma: 514 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland Device: Lots, started with a Psion 3 circa 1998	Creative Commons licenses A secondary point I want to clarify: A Creative Commons license doesn't reduce or repudiate their copyright over their own work. All it does is promise the reader that the author will refrain from suing them for breach of copyright if they make certain uses of the material. The no-commercial-derivs license, for example -- if you download a book and merrily start selling it, your violation of the license means the author can sue your ass, just as if you did the same with a cracked DRM-d edition from a major publisher. Nor does a CC-licensed release preclude the author from selling their own work under a different license, and treating derivatives of that sold work differently from an earlier CC release. A Creative Commons license does not mean "this work is in the public domain and I can do what I like with it". CC was a compromise, designed to allow authors and creators to benefit commercially from their work while at the same time making copies freely available. It's a compromise -- necessitated by some brain-dead internal contradictions in copyright law as it currently exists -- and some of the edge cases are potentially very messy indeed, although on balance I think we're a lot better off for having it available as a framework. The point I'm trying to make is, it is possible that you will occasionally see a pirate commercial edition of a work that's licensed under Creative Commons -- and equally likely that you'll see a legitimate commercial edition, too. In all cases, the first thing to do is check the publisher (if they also publish a Dead Tree edition, then it's 99% likely to be legitimate), and only if something smells funny, contact the author.