RE: Creative Commons - "Non-Commercial" use?

I passed your question on to Mia Garlick, general counsel of Creative Commons. Here's what she wrote:  

We have crafted some noncommercial guidelines to assist in clarifying what is and is not noncommercial - these are a discussion draft only

• not final: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5752 and have been debated a little on our licenses discussion list.

The issue of noncommercial was involved in the recent decision in Amsterdam about CC licenses: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/

5823 where the court found that a commercial publisher had violated

both the Attribution & NonCommercial license limitations.

Unfortunately, the Dutch judge did not engage in a lengthy analysis of the NonCommercial issue so we just have a matter of fact statement. We are hoping to post a more complete English translation of the Dutch decision shortly.    

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)

Stanford University, Lecturer in Law

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

707-485-1242 * fax: 707-485-1243

Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and

                Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)

From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property [mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Davidson, Matthew T. Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 8:15 AM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property Subject: [CNI-(C)] Creative Commons - "Non-Commercial" use?  

Is anyone aware of any litigation or any good secondary literature dealing with the meaning of "non-commercial" in the context of the Creative Commons license?

Any references would be much appreciated.

• Matt Davidson Miami, FL