Does the CC-Wiki license allow the licensor to withdraw their content at will?

Question

Hans Passant quotes from the CC-Wiki license:

I think there's a problem here. The full text of the Creative Commons License under which SOIS publishes your answer has this clause in section 7b, Termination:

Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.

I however don't have a clue what the provided part of the sentence tries to say.

Can somebody translate this into plain english: Does this clause allow people to withdraw the content they licensed to SO at a whim? Making this bullshit (from this user) actually - valid?

My interpretation is that this is not the case, and that "stop distributing the Work" means distributing it elsewhere. In my understanding, the license granted to SO is for all eternity, and not unilaterally revocable. I have no idea whether this is correct, though.

Answer 1

This is covered by the Creative Commons FAQ under the question "What if I change my mind?":

You can stop distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation...

The clause that makes this explicitly clear is the part after the section you highlighted for emphasis, as removing already-released copies of the work would serve as an attempt to withdraw the License, which is not allowed.

So no, there's no obligation to allow a user to go around vandalizing their own posts, since they cannot "take back" their contribution. As Jeff points out, the license terms don't prevent the user from potentially coming to a mutual removal agreement with the site, but the more destructively the user acts, the less cooperative the team is likely to be.

Answer 2

provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License

Is the key phrase. They can change the license for any future distribution, but any distribution made prior to such a change is considered to be released under this license.

So in other words, once you post it on SO, you can't remove it. You'll notice all edit history is permitted to be reviewed.

Now, had someone stolen proprietary code and released it (in itself a generally considered a criminal act) then it would be fair to have a staff member remove it. Such a move would be thoroughly documented, so that would be fair.

But what that user is doing is bunk.

Stealing from Tim's answer and using this to clarify just a little bit:

Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable.

Answer 3

Fringe cases, ask a lawyer. I have no idea if the CC license is applicable if a user did not knowingly agree to that. But US copyright law is quite crude anyway, (yet it might take precedence).

I'm sure it's not honored here, but European copyright law has more specific provisions for such cases. Substitutionally in Germany the creators rights are meticulously separated from commercial/utilization/licensing rights, with the former given significant precedence. Specifically § 41 UrhG and § 42 UrhG are designed to manage revokal disputes.

Now 41 would only be applicable if the servers are really really really slow. If it takes e.g. two years to publish a posting, then that's an opportunity to take back the contribution.
More relevant is § 42 here, in that it allows a creator to revoke a license if it starts to contradict his view/opinion in a foundational way. Meaning that if you for example wrote an appraisal of chocolate milk, but later develop an allergy, you should be entitled to have an opinion piece removed if it has become subjectively slanderous to you.

So to answer the original question: not at a whim, but the license could be revoked under some conditions. Assumingly you don't even need copyright law for that; libel suits usually seal the fate for newspaper articles. -- But again, narrow conditions that are difficult to match for technical discussions as long as they stay technical. There's no generic answer. And as for the cited example, the text appears to be some running joke.