Melanie Dulong de Rosnay joined the Institute for Information Law in January 2009 until 2010 to write a study on potential imcompatibilities between Creative Commons licences. She is also publications manager for Communia, the European network on digital public domain.

Prior to joining IViR, Melanie was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where she directed a distance learning course project on copyright for librarians. In 2007-2008, she was also a fellow at Science Commons, working on open access science and open data policy. Now a  member of Creative Commons Netherlands team, she founded Creative Commons France at CERSA (Administrative Science Studies Research Center at University Paris 2) in 2003.

Creative Commons Licenses Legal Pitfalls: Incompatibilities and Solutions, September 2010.

Creative Commons licenses have been designed to facilitate the use and reuse of creative works by granting some permissions in advance. However, the system is complex with a multiplicity of licenses options, formats and versions available, including translations into different languages and adaptation to specific legislations towards versions which are declared compatible among each other after an international porting process. It should be assessed whether all ported licenses cover exactly the same subject matter, rights and restrictions or whether small language differences may have an impact on the rights actually granted and legal security of current users or the availability of works for future generations to access and build upon. Besides, other possible sources of legal uncertainty and incompatibility, as well as their actual or potential consequences, need to be evaluated, such as the validity and enforceability of the licenses across jurisdictions with different and possibly inconsistent legislations, the variations between the licenses summary and the licenses text written in legal language, the interoperability with other copyleft licenses. This study presents the different licenses (chapter 2), identifies various possible sources of legal incompatibility (chapter 3), evaluates their actual impact (chapter 4) and finally proposes options to mitigate risks and improve compatibility, consistency, clarity and legal security (chapter 5).

15.09.2010

Updated 15.09.2010