In the GNU GPL v2, the 5th paragraph is written as :
- You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
The Creative Commons do nearly the same just before section 1 :
By exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below), You accept and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License ("Public License"). To the extent this Public License may be interpreted as a contract, You are granted the Licensed Rights in consideration of Your acceptance of these terms and conditions, and the Licensor grants You such rights in consideration of benefits the Licensor receives from making the Licensed Material available under these terms and conditions.
I am not a lawyer so I don't understand: how can something I didn't signed, or maybe even read, apply to me ?
What if I create a slightly different version of the license, and add "by using my image/tool/software, you silently accept to give away your soul to me" somewhere in the text ?
If you have human-readable documentation of how this work, I'd be very grateful (all stuffs I found on google were way to hard for a muggle like me).