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Creative Commons License Upheld by Dutch Court

musicon writes "As seen on Groklaw, a recent court decision upheld the the Creative Commons license in the Netherlands: 'The Creative Commons licenses are quite new, so there has been very little in the way of case law so far, so this is a significant development. The ruling rejected a 'the license wasn't clear' defense, particularly for sophisticated entities, and it upheld the license as binding without the licensee having to agree or even to have knowledge of the terms of the license.' You can read successful plaintiff Adam Curry's blog on the ruling too."

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  1. Re:That is misleading by gr8_phk · · Score: 1, Redundant
    "You can't however enforce a license that the other party hasn't agreed to."

    To me, that was always the loophole for EULAs. "By pressing this button and installing this software you agree to these terms". Well no. No law (until recently) says pushing a button means you agree to anything. The only thing that applies meaning to the installation is the EULA, so if I don't agree then pushing the button doesn't mean anything.

    Same with credit card companies changing their terms "your continued use of the card indicates your agreement". That form of acknowledgement is only valid if I agree to what they said. What if the letter got lost in the mail and I never even saw it?

    CC Licenses and the GPL are quite different in that if you don't agree you've actually got less freedom :-) If someone doesn't agree, they're left with copyright law - which doesn't let them do much. If they then point out that the license says they can do something more, that's saying they agreed to the license terms.