Comment Actually.... (Score 2, Insightful) 168
According to sources on the CC mailing list, Creative Commons licenses can be changed (for future downloaders) but not revoked (for people who downloaded your CC licensed work in the past).
You retain ownership of the copyright and as such you can choose to change the license at any time.
You can't however revoke a license you have already granted. That means if you relase something under the Attribution-Sharealike license, and someone downloads it that same day, then they are free to use it under terms of that license for ever. If you change the license to 'All Rights Reserved' the very next day, then future downloaders can't use it at all.
To complicate things though, someone *could* just download it from the original downloader who is forced to always make it available under terms of his or her BY-SA license (brain explodes).
The challenge is going to be proving what license you downloaded something under. One way to potential prove what CC terms you D/L'd something under is the Internet Archive, another is Yahoo Myweb (although IAMNAL etc).
IMHO I think the CC organisation has done a poor job of explaining things like this and other similarly complex issues. They don't have a message board on their website, and emailed questions are never answered.
Creative Commons certainly aren't helping diffuse the misinformation out there which is a shame, and makes attacks like this one hardly suprising.
You retain ownership of the copyright and as such you can choose to change the license at any time.
You can't however revoke a license you have already granted. That means if you relase something under the Attribution-Sharealike license, and someone downloads it that same day, then they are free to use it under terms of that license for ever. If you change the license to 'All Rights Reserved' the very next day, then future downloaders can't use it at all.
To complicate things though, someone *could* just download it from the original downloader who is forced to always make it available under terms of his or her BY-SA license (brain explodes).
The challenge is going to be proving what license you downloaded something under. One way to potential prove what CC terms you D/L'd something under is the Internet Archive, another is Yahoo Myweb (although IAMNAL etc).
IMHO I think the CC organisation has done a poor job of explaining things like this and other similarly complex issues. They don't have a message board on their website, and emailed questions are never answered.
Creative Commons certainly aren't helping diffuse the misinformation out there which is a shame, and makes attacks like this one hardly suprising.
