Would you mind setting the license fields in the “More information” blocks for the Everything Library uploads?
(Or, if you’d prefer, adding license declarations to the descriptions.)
I’d like to add them to my Libre Game Assets collection and I’d feel a lot more comfortable about doing so if didn’t rely on a license declaration on a completely different domain.
(UPDATE: Also, I need that “constraining a CC license is a violation of trademark law” part resolved first.)
Also, you can’t say “This license does not cover repackaging and reselling these assets as assets. You have to do something with them!”
It’s right there in the Creative Commons trademark policy if you scroll down to “License Modification”.
If you place any restriction on use of a CC-licensed work that has the effect of limiting or further conditioning the permissions granted to the public under the standard CC license, you must not use any CC trademarks or branding in connection with the license or in any way that suggests the work is available under a CC license.
…and that’s just about not diluting the efficacy of the trademarks by illegally inducing uncertainty in what it means to see a Creative Commons mark.
(Part of the more general “you can’t use a competitor’s trademark to hurt them” thrust of various aspects of trademark law that’s also behind not being more specific than “compared to the next leading brand” in advertisements.)
The license itself is structured so that your restrictions would slough off as soon as the person who got it directly from you gave it to someone else, because your restriction isn’t part of the license that gets reapplied in the hand-off from someone who isn’t you to someone else who isn’t you.
Also, in pursuit of fostering that sense of safety in a world of scary legal documents, Creative Commons licenses are irrevocable if you had the legal right to apply them in the first place.
You’re fully within your rights to stop offering new downloads under a CC license, but anyone who received them under that license still retains their rights and, even if your restriction is held to be legally valid, it’s gone as soon as they upload it without repackaging or charging for it for others to download.
The Debian Free Software Guidelines also have a test to ensure that when evaluating software licenses, called the tentacles of evil test, which is a thought experiment about a company buying the rights and then trying to make existing licensees’ lives miserable.
I believe the Open-Source Definition also covers the same “can’t limit resale” thing under the “No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor” rule.
The MIT license achieves that effect through the pieces I’ve emphasized below:
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions
…though, without the parts ensuring it’s kept separate from additional restrictions, people might have to ask a friend to enter into the initial exchange and then redistribute it to them to get free of such requirements.
I assume that MIT would be the ones whose trademark you’d potentially be sued over if you tried to change that in the MIT license without wiping out all mention of MIT.
