Regarding my previous post, now I want to outline some details about obtaining evidence for copyright of website content licensed under Creative Commons.

There are certain difficulties when applying the method mentioned in my previous post, because of the nature of the Creative Commons license. A CC-ed content may have more than one author either initially or later on, when the content is distributed via the Internet. If the original author(s) have put the content under by-nc-nd clause or under by-nd clause of the Creative Commons, no derivative content is allowed and therefore the author(s) may take advantage of my explanations in the later post here in the Legal Blog.

If the original author(s) allow their content to be used as a base for derivative works, the situation is slightly different. I’ll give you an example to illustrate my thoughts :

Let’s presume that John Smith has published a website and he put the logo of by-nc-sa clause of the Creative Commons. This means that John Smith allows everybody to distribute his webpage content, to remix it (to make derivative works), to share it, but the user (remixer, distributer) is also obliged to fulfill two mandatory conditions:

1. Not to use the content and the derivative works for a commercial purpose, and
2. To indicate John Smith as the author of the used (distributed, shared etc.) content

Difficulties arise when there are two and more authors, who have remixed the original content. In this situation, my opinion is that one of the authors-remixers could apply the TimeStamp-ing method. In order to establish the Creative Commons nature of the content, he could state at the end of the content that it is licensed under CC and point out the sources of the original content. This will prove that as of that date of TimeStamp-ing the content it was licensed under Creative Commons and the sources of the original content will be indicated.

Disclaimer: The resolution of a copyright dispute depend on a great scale on the particular judge who hears the lawsuit. As the court in Bulgaria is independent, the above arguments may or may not be considered as enough evidence to rule in favour of the party who TimeStamp-ed the content.