Important:
This is just a purely hypothetical thought experiment of mine and NOT legal advice or endorsement of something.
I have no clue on the legal implications, so take everything what I say with many, many grains of salt. I am not a lawyer. :P
That having said:
I believe these licenses can be “killed”:
- CC BY
- CC BY-ND
- CC BY-NC
- CC BY-NC-ND
(Reminder: See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ for a full list)
I have actually read the license texts, but only version 4.0 (I did not check earlier versions).
The main motivation is to get rid of the BY, ND and NC clauses.
Note that all these licenses do not have a “share-alike” clause. In other words, as long as you abide the original license, you can just slap a different license on it, right?
My idea is that this means, as long as you use your copy under the conditions of the license, you can release your copy under whatever license you like, and then only using this copy for your actual work.
Of course, the detail lies in the devil, so here's the (hypothetical, untested) way on how to “kill” the licenses:
The Double Copy
- Copy and publish the work in question somewhere (let's call it “Original”) in the Internet. Let's call this copy “Copy 1”. Make a verbatim copy, regardless of the license. It should *not* be published on the publication platform you would normally prefer. I would say your position might be better later if the publication platform is not THAT obscure.
- Make sure that you perfectly abide by the license of Original. So, attribute properly and if NC is in place, make EXTRA sure there is no doubt that Copy 1 was released as private. So, no ads, don't earn money with it, etc. Note that NC may be very fishy in some jurisdictions, so be careful with that one. (see also here)
- Now comes the “kill”: You publish Copy 1 under a *new* license without the restrictions. In the new license, you can get rid of NC, ND and BY clauses. I suppose WTFPL would be a possible license.
- Make sure that you don't apply any additional restrictions to forbid something which the Original license would forbid. Taking away restrictions, however, seems fine (which was the point all along ). This needed to comply with the clause called “No downstream restrictions” (usually sections 2(a)(5)(B) or 2(a)(5)(C) in CC 4.0).
- Now you copy *your copy* again and publish it again somewhere else (Copy 2), this time on your preferred publication platform and *without* being bound the restrictions of Original. Now you only have to abide by the license you have chosen for Copy 1.
In theory (!) you are now free to do with Copy 2 whatever you want.
The original license is not actually “killed”, since it still holds true for Original. The trick is to make the restrictions meaningless by using copies to change the license.
If anyone claims copyright infringement, you can now defend yourselves by stating that Copy 2 is based on Copy 1, rather than on Original, so the rights you got from Copy 1. As far I know, the rights granted with a CC license are irrevokable. :P
If this would be actually legal (I am not sure at all.), the implications would be very interesting:
- 4 out of 6 (!) CC licenses, version 4.0 (!) can be defeated by this
- BOTH ND licenses do NOT prevent the actual distribution of derivative works because they don't apply to Copy 2. I have read those licenses and have not found anything which sounded like ShareAlike
- For the same reason, 2 out of 3 NonCommercial licenses can be defeated
- And finally, 4 out of 6 Attribution licenses can be defeated. Well, the author is still attributed, but not always so.
- The two ShareAlike licenses, CC BY-SA and CC BY-NC-SA are immune to The Double Copy because of their ShareAlike clause
But I have no idea if anything of what I have written is actually true. I have no clue how it would work out in real life. I have no idea what would happen. I don't know if it is actually legal, etc.
What do you say about this?