Can I re-license my CC content under a more restrictive license?

November 12, 2006 4:20 PM

I have a weblog which is published uses a Creative Commons Attribution license. I've discovered that some spammers are including snippets of my weblog posts in their e-mails, presumably to poison or avoid spam filters. It turns out leaving off the Non-Commercial clause was a bad idea! Is it possible to retroactively re-license my content under a more restrictive license, or am I screwed?

Submitted anonymously because I don't want to draw attention to my unprotected content until I know if I can protect it again.

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Are you under the impression that spammers obey licensing restrictions?
posted by trevyn at 4:27 PM on November 12, 2006

The way I understand it, it is possible to relicense your work, which will prevent future use of your entries. However, if some spammer has already incorporated your data into their spam database, they won't be affected, because when they built the tool, they were within the letter of the law.

To stop them, you'd have to prove that they used your data AFTER you added the more restrictive license to stop them.

As I said, this is the way I understand it, but I am not a lawyer. Perhaps someone with a better background in this stuff can give a more definitive answer.

And yeah - what trevyn said - spammers aren't likely to care, anyway.
posted by chrisamiller at 4:45 PM on November 12, 2006

You could go to the source. chrisamiller appears to be right.
posted by ardgedee at 5:16 PM on November 12, 2006

I don't know what page you two are reading, but this is what the wiki says to me:

Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license. You can stop distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation, be they verbatim copies, copies included in collective works and/or adaptations of your work.

In short: The material has already been released, and the spammers have all the right in the world to use it into perpetuity.
posted by Jairus at 5:57 PM on November 12, 2006

[ I have to agree with trevyn, this should have zero effect whatsoever on people snarfing your content for splogs. The people that do this couldn't give a shit. ]

As the author you can always change the license under which you offer your work at any time. For example, Redhat holds the copyrights to the Cygwin project and dual licenses it, as GPL and as a commercial license. The Mozilla license is a triple-license if I recall correctly. You can do anything you want, go crazy.

However, the problem is that you can't put the genie back in the bottle once it's been let out. The works that you released under a CC license are out there and anyone that obtained the CC licensed versions are free to continue using them and can give them to anyone they choose. So in practice, unless you frequently release updated versions of content (which would render the older ones obsolete), relicensing will have no effect whatsoever, since there is no way to revoke the old CC license on the works already released.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:58 PM on November 12, 2006

As Jairus points out, your original license is irrevocable. Given that, please don't jump on the NonCommercial bandwagon just because of spammers — as trevyn pointed out, they're breaking plenty of rules already. I don't know if you read the cc-licenses mailing list, but recently there's been a lot of talk about the many gray areas of the prohibition on commercial use.
posted by brett at 6:00 PM on November 12, 2006

I don't know if you read the cc-licenses mailing list, but recently there's been a lot of talk about the many gray areas of the prohibition on commercial use.

Do elaborate for those of us who don't, please- I'm curious.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:12 PM on November 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

ThePinkSuperhero, I would guess that the recent discussions in the Oct-Nov archives (by thread is easiest to navigate) about the 3.0 licenses cover a lot of NC ground.
posted by mathowie at 6:43 PM on November 12, 2006

Jairus: My understanding of the FAQ info is that anybody who acquired the goods from the source before relicensing is bound to the old license. As are their recipients, and so on. Anybody who gets the goods from the source after relicensing have to observe the new license, leading to two groups of people (those who can give it away, those who can't).

The practical distinction is effectively nil without an audit trail. And retroactive action is impossible.
posted by ardgedee at 7:19 PM on November 12, 2006

Here's the non-revocation clause in the Creative Commons Licence (7(b)):

Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.

This may or may not mean that your licence is irrevocable, depending on which jurisdiction you're in. Its language may not be strong enough for some (in that read carefully it is not actually an undertaking not to revoke), and the uncertain legal status of public licences doesn't help clear things up.

Note that the GPL doesn't contain anything like this provision and is probably revocable in many jurisdictions under at least some circumstances.

In practical terms, there is of course nothing you can do about the spammers.

(I'm not your lawyer and this general discussion is not legal advice)
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:49 AM on November 13, 2006