Legal implications of open licenses

• Author: Monica Adriana Lupa?cu
• Position: PhD Student, Faculty of Law, 'Nicolae Titulescu' University of Bucharest, (e-mail: monica.lupascu@cyberlaw.ro).
• Pages: 64-73

LESIJ NO. XXIII, VOL. 2/2016

LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF OPEN LICENSES

Monica Adriana LUPACU*

Abstract

This paper studies the Creative Commons and GPL open licenses from the perspective of some

of their legal implications. The social inter est that has lead to the creation of these types of licenses is

being studied, as well as their relationship with the public domain. The scope of the paper is to find out

to what extent appertaining to the Crea tive Commons or GPL licensing system ca n assure the

protection necessar y for the social interest of accessibility.

Keywords: Crea tive Commons, General P ublic License, copyright, open licenses, public

interest, public domain

Introduction

The field covered b y this study is

intellectual p roperty, respectively, the field

of copyright. The study is focused on the

analysis of accessibility as an extremely

important form of social interest in the

current society, which justifies the

reconfirmation of the right of access to

works belonging to rights holders. From this

perspective, the model of the open licenses

whose analysis allows the identification of

the forms of protection meant to support the

public interest corresponding to accessibility

is relevant. Also mentioned, are some of the

legal implications of belonging to open

licenses, including from the perspective of

the common points that these contracts with

the public d omain present. The relationship

with the public domain is important because,

in the case of this sphere of works, the

existence of the right of access i s the most

obvious, but the arguments retained in this

paper are valid in regards to any other

context in which the right of access may be

* PhD Student, Faculty of Law, ”Nicolaeă Titulescu”ă Universityă ofă Bucharest,ă (e-mail:

monica.lupascu@cyberlaw.ro).

1

James Boyle,ă“TheăPublicăDomaină– EnclosingătheăCommonsăofătheăMind”,ă2008,ăp.182.

found, therefore including in the case of

copyright limitations a nd exceptions

conferred by the current legislation.

The public interest that justified the

appearance of open licenses

James B oyle

1

, o ne of the members if

the Creative Commons council, identifies

what could be a short history of CC licenses

and of what justified the development of this

open licensing system.

“Once copyrighted, the work is

protected by the full might of the legal

system. And the legal system’s default setting

is that all rights are reser ved to th e author,

which means effectively that anyone but the

author is forbidden to copy, ada pt or

publicly perform the work. This might have

been a fine rule for a world in which there

were high bar riers to publica tion. The

material that was not published was

theoretica lly under an all rights reserved,

but who cared? It was practica lly

inaccessible anyway. After the development