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European IP Bulletin, Issue 35, October 2006 - Hot Topics

1. Creative Commons Licences Upheld By The Dutch Court

On 9 March 2006, the District Court of Amsterdam, in summary proceedings, handed down the first known court decision interpreting a Creative Commons licence. The court held, in Adam Curry v. Audax Publishing B.V., Case 334492/KG 06-176 SR [2006], that using photographs contrary to the stated terms of a Creative Commons licence under which they were made available could result in a violation of Dutch law. 

The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2001, with the aim of expanding the scope of the public domain to enable creative works to legally be made available to others. The Creative Commons project is designed to provide alternative solutions to avoid knowledge barriers and monopolies of the current intellectual property laws. The Creative Commons establishes a regime which enables creators, copyright owners and educators to have a flexible range of contractual licences to release some of their copyrighted works to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes. The Creative Commons also provides a simple form of Digital Rights Management [RDF/XML metadata] that describes the licence and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works.

Most types of Creative Common licences require that the licensees give ‘attribution’ or credit to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. In addition, there are three extra options available for the copyright owners in entering into a Creative Common licence:

• Non-commercial: the copyright holder allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform their work and make derivative works but for non-commercial purposes only;
• No Derivative Works: the copyright holder allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of their work, not derivative works based upon it;
• Share Alike: the copyright holder allow others to distribute derivative works only under a licence identical to the licence that governs the copyrighters’ work.

 

These three options in turn create six suites of Creative Commons licences: Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd), Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa), Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc), Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd), Attribution Share Alike (by-sa), and Attribution (by). These six liecences vary in terms of the level of restrictions.

The mechanism of the Creative Commons licences suggests that work licensed under it is not necessarily available for unlimited or unconditional copying. One should pay attention to the restrictions put forward by the different types of licences. Moreover, before Curry v Audax, there had been very little in the way of case law.

The proceedings of Curry v Audax arose when the former Dutch local media guru Adam Curry posted photos of his family on the well-known online photo-sharing site www.flickr.com under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike licence (by-nc-sa) 2.0. This licence enables others to remix, tweak, and build upon the copyrighters’ works non-commercially, as long as they credit the copyrighters and licence their new creations under the identical terms.

The photos posted by Curry carried the notice ‘This photo is public’, which is a standard feature of all flickr.com images viewable by the public, and a reference to the above-mentioned Creative Commons licence. The Dutch weekly Weekend, a tabloid, reproduced four of Curry’s photographs in a story about Curry’s children without seeking his permission in advance, although there was a notice indicating that the copyrights of these photos were owned by Adam Curry.

Curry sued Audax, the publisher of Weekend, for copyright infringement, breach of contract and invasion of his right of privacy. In relation to the copyright claim, Audax argued that it was misled by the notice ‘This photo is public’, and that the link to the Creative Commons licence was not obvious. Audax also argued that Weekend was informed of the existence of the Creative Commons license only much later by its legal counsel. Therefore, Weekend had assumed in good faith that no authorisation from Curry was required. Moreover, Curry had not incurred any damages by the publication of the photos in Weekend, since the photos were freely available to the public on www.flickr.com.

The District Court of Amsterdam rejected Audax’s defence, holding that:

• the effect of the link to the Creative Commons licence was that the limitations in that licence applied and the photographs were not in the public domain
• Audax should have carried out due diligence before publishing the photographs
• the photos were subject to the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike licence, and Audax should have followed its conditions.

 

The court ruled that Audax violated two sections of Curry’s Creative Commons licence:

• Section 4a, which includes the obligation to provide a copy of the Creative Commons licence when distributing or publicly displaying a work; and
• Section 4c, which prohibits use of the work in a manner that is primarily for commercial purposes.

 

The court also ruled that Weekend must not use Curry’s pictures again or it would face fines of 1,000 euros for each photograph used without permission. Curry was, however, awarded only a comparatively low compensation. The court thought that the monetary value of the pictures was very low, because they had already been published on the internet.

The decision of District Court of Amsterdam is important as it confirms that photographs placed on a public website under the Creative Commons licences, which offer more flexibility than traditional copyright licences, have not become part of the public domain in such a way that anybody may use, reproduce or publish these pictures in any way and for any reason or purpose.

 

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