It seems clear that the German court in this particular case has made a bad decision regarding the meaning of 'non-commercial'. But what seems to be missing from the conversation is clarity of perspective when considering the value of the CC-NC license. From the perspective of noncommercial website owners that use CC-NC content, the court decision is especially bad. They have basically been told that they must avoid (or remove) CC-NC content, or risk being sued for infringement. From the perspective of content creators that make their work available, the decision is not so bad -- on the one hand, they can be confident (in Germany anyway) that the license has some teeth to it if they want to pursue an infringement case; but on the other hand, they may find that the distribution of their work that they may have hoped for will now be reduced due to noncommercial site owners fear of using work with that license.
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WHO should avoid it ?
From the perspective of noncommercial website owners that use CC-NC content, the court decision is especially bad. They have basically been told that they must avoid (or remove) CC-NC content, or risk being sued for infringement.
From the perspective of content creators that make their work available, the decision is not so bad -- on the one hand, they can be confident (in Germany anyway) that the license has some teeth to it if they want to pursue an infringement case; but on the other hand, they may find that the distribution of their work that they may have hoped for will now be reduced due to noncommercial site owners fear of using work with that license.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ZachOfAllTrades.
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