Greetings Open Education Friends:
Last year, Creative Commons started to watch a court case in the United States involving interpretation of an NC 4.0 license in the commercial copy shop context.
2016 blog posts:
As you may recall, the district court granted the motion to dismiss in favor of FedEx Office, a commercial copy center that a K-12 school district engaged to make copies of NC-licensed content for use in the classroom by students. The court found the text of the CC license unambiguous on the question of the ability of an entity to engage others besides employees to exercise rights granted by the license.
Great Minds appealed the decision. Two days ago, CC requested permission to file an amicus brief with the appeals court in support of FedEx Office explaining the CC licenses. CC submitted a full brief with our motion. We just posted an announcement, where you can find links to all of the relevant legal filings and decisions: https://creativecommons.org/2017/07/06/cc-amicus-brief/
We recognize this will likely raise questions -- including questions directed to you the open education community -- about how NC and the licenses work. The most important point to keep in mind is that this litigation involves a single, simple question of interpretation for the court's resolution: whether an entity-licensee can use non employees to exercise its rights under CC licenses, including the NC licenses. The principle we articulate in support of the district court's decision is as stated in the brief and blog post: our license and applicable law allow entity-licensees to use others, including non employees, to exercise rights the license granted when doing so on behalf of and at the direction of a licensee who is in compliance with the license. (See the brief for the fullest, best statement.) To be sure, there are cases where commercial copy centers would violate NC by making a profit off of copies, but that's not the case or the facts pleaded here.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Creative Commons will keep you posted as the appeal proceeds.
A special thanks to Diane Peters (CC General Counsel) and Mike Carroll (CC U.S.) for all of their hard work on this case.
Your colleague in open education,
Cable