Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: sample document library: copyright, copyleft, CC, GPL?

[Tim Mensch (tim-coho-l]

Andrew Netherton wrote:
> Perhaps I'm being overly particular (or even zealous), but I'm
> wondering how the sample document libary documents should be
> rights-protected.  Although I doubt we'll come across any copyrighted
> documents, I'd want to exclude those right away.  The whole purpose
> (that I have in mind, at least) for the library is to provide a single
> source of documentation that cohousing groups (and other groups, I'm
> sure) can look at, and freely take and modify for their own purposes.
> Thus, copyright is out.
>   
That rules out all documents, unfortunately. It's been mentioned once 
already that in the US when you write a document, it's copyrighted. I 
think it would be a good idea to request that all documents that are 
posted be licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses--they 
don't all have restrictions, by the way. Of course the "owner" of the 
copyright of your HOA docs, and therefore the entity that would need to 
authorize the release of said docs is probably the HOA itself, so to be 
safe it would be best if each set of documents were cleared for release 
by each community in whatever manner is customary for the community. 
This is not only an issue with the hosting site, but also

Speaking of deciding to make the docs public, I'm a bit concerned myself 
about other ramifications of communities putting their docs online: We 
were given explicit advice to not make all of our policies viewable 
online where an insurance agent could find them, because of the 
potential for a policy to be seen as a poor insurance risk. Maybe the 
documents could be "anonymized", so that you can get them, but don't 
know what community they reference? General info about the 
community--age, approximate number of households, etc. could be 
available, but if someone were Googling for your cohousing community 
they wouldn't be able to find its HOA docs. They might be able to guess 
which community is yours, but it would seriously reduce the exposure. 
Not as nice as being able to, e.g., send an email to someone in the 
community and ask them how their pet policy actually works for them, but 
better than having an insurance agent find those docs and decide that 
your kids room rules don't go far enough to ensure adequate kid safety.

Just a few thoughts.

--
Tim Mensch

Currently in Pleasant Hill Cohousing (CA): phch.org

Member of Tumblerock, a Boulder, CO area community
in its forming stages.