Saturday, March 11, 2006

Creative Commons enforced in court

The first case (as far as I'm aware) enforcing a Creative Commons licence has come out in the Netherlands. The case involves famous podcaster Adam Curry, who had a number of pictures in Flickr under an Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike licence. Some of the pictures were taken by Weekend, a Dutch tabloid, and placed in the cover. Curry sued over infringement of the non-commercial and attribution elements of the licence, and apparently has obtained €€1000.

An interesting case that proves that CC licences are enforceable in court.

2 comments:

CM said...

Dear Andrés,
There seems to be a sort of precedent in Spain.
A Badajoz court (the Juzgado de Primera Instancia nùmero 6 de Badajoz) ruled that the Metropol bar must not pay royalties to an Authors society, because it only plays Creative Commons music.
More (in Spanish) at http://servicios.hoy.es/pg060228/prensa/noticias/Badajoz/200602/28/HOY-BAD-021.html

Andres Guadamuz said...

Dear Cedric,

I forgot about the SGAE casem thank you for pointing it out! This case is very interesting in itself with regards to collective agencies.

I would still say that this case is the first enforcement ruling, which is also a landmark case for CC.