Draft notice for older version of licenses (and a welcome)

[Kat Walsh]

Hello license community!

We're proposing a notice to appear above the legal code of pre-4.0
versions of the CC licenses:

"This is an older version of [hyperlink to corresponding CC 4.0
license]. If you are licensing your own work, we strongly recommend
the use of [hyperlink to corresponding CC 4.0 license] instead.
Compared to the [CC 1.0/2.0/3.0] licenses, CC 4.0 licenses are more
user-friendly and more internationally robust."

Link for suggesting wording changes on the doc is here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BFg9h0yxPn-IoQ7-uHc7sPpeg086PaWo2buc7rZzUQU/edit?usp=sharing

More general comments for discussion are welcome on the list.

Some questions for you:

* Should this be on both the legal code and the deed pages? If so,
should the notice be the same? Or is there a strong reason not to have
the notice at all?

* How can we make the wording clearer and more useful? (In particular,
we wish to avoid giving the impression that the older licenses are
invalid--just that if you are in a position to choose, we encourage
use of the newer licenses.)

Motivation:

* While the Chooser and CC's own guidance directs people to use 4.0
for their own work, many people find the CC licenses via search
engines or via other materials which still refer to older licenses.

* While a reuser of existing material cannot change the license, some
people decide to use CC licenses through seeing others license their
work, and they should be aware that newer licenses are available.
Additionally, some may be in a position to encourage the licensor to
use the newer version instead.

* We have seen some issues particularly related to license enforcement
that would be helped by greater adoption of the 4.0 license suite.

And one more thing:

This is also where I will welcome our new counsel Yuanxiao Xu, who
drafted this notice! She began at CC a few weeks ago and is also on
this list. :-)

Cheers,
Kat

[Yuanxiao Xu]

Thank you, Maarten and Pedro, for generously sharing your suggestions with us in the Google Doc!

I tend to agree with Maarten that the notice only needs to appear on the deed, because (1) users generally land on the deed page first before getting to the legal code page, and (2) the casual tone we want to adopt for the notice fits better with the deed. 

I likely won't want the notice to explicitly target only licensors. Licensees should also be encouraged to read the notice, mainly because (1) as Pedro pointed out, the different license versions can have an impact on the licensees, and (2) the licensees may one day become licensors.

I hope to hear more from you soon, whether you have already contributed or haven't yet had a chance to join the discussion! Thanks in advance for any thoughts you may be willing to share with us on these topics.

Yuanxiao 

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[Maarten Zeinstra]

Thank you Yuanxiao and welcome to CC!

I disagree that the notice should also address licensees. Having ambiguous wording might confuse licensees, thinking that they can also use the link to the 4.0 equivalent when reusing, which is not the case. I'm not saying that the notice should only appear for licensors (this is probably also not technically possible), but to prime the reader to understand that the notice is for those who want to license their own work.

Maarten

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[Yuanxiao Xu]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all your input! 

We will be sharing Marteen's suggested version with CC staff and the broader community in the next few days to solicit further feedback, and hopefully have the notice published on the deed pages soon.

In the meantime, please feel free to keep commenting in the document if you have any new suggestions/thoughts.

Yuanxiao