Stanford Center for Internet and Society

As reported by Lessig and others, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded yesterday a ruling by the Northern District of California which denied the copyright claims of an open source software developer for violations of the Artistic License. This is a landmark decision which is likely to influence all types of free licensing, including Creative Commons licenses and the question of enforceability of copyright claims upon violation of free licenses in general. Here are four quick points on the decision:

Something significant has happened in the world of free licensing, Lessig has the details and a video. Apparently, an important step has been made towards interoperability between the license controlling Wikipedia articles (the GFDL v.1.2), and the CC license by-share-alike. (See also this post on the Creative Commons website).

Over the last 3-4 years many people have been speculating about how U.S. courts would interpret the Creative Commons (CC) licenses in litigation concerning their legal operation and effect. There are several reported cases in Europe, but to my knowledge, none so far in the U.S. Due to the popularity of the CC licenses, it was only a question of time before someone would try to enforce (or challenge) them in court. In the first occasion it actually happened, the claim took a quite unanticipated turn.

In a fresh law review article Prof. Lydia Pallas Loren explores a number of interesting issues concerning Creative Commons licensing.

Watch the new "Wanna Work Together" video (3 min), and click on the ad!

In catching up on some email and other odds and end this holiday weekend, I came upon this totally cool email from Larry Lessig about how Creative Commons is fund raising through Revver. Lessig writes: