[cc-community] What does NC means?

jonathon jonathon.blake at gmail.com
Sat Sep 15 17:27:40 EDT 2007


Terry wrote:

> Nope. Not according to the guidelines. If you make a profit, then you
> are a "for profit organization" and you cannot use NC works. Period.

a) The  Creative Commons Foundation guidelines prohibit all
non-501(c)3 organizations from using NC content;

b) The MIT OCW Guidelines do allow non-501(c)3 organizations to use NC content;

c)  Unless the loophole in the Creative Commons Foundation guidelines
have been fixed/changed, a 501(c)3 organization can sell NC content
for a gross profit, under certain conditions.

> The truth is that NC licenses have EXACTLY ONE practical use: you

This depends upon which theory of what "Non Commercial" means, that
one subscribes to.

> IOW, it is not a "community" or a "commons" license. It's just a niche
> license for commercial content creators to use.

It is a niche license.   I'd suggest that at least 95% of the people
that use the license have no clue as to what they are doing, much less
why they are doing it.
(Flicker is probably the worst offender, in terms of deliberately
misleading people as to what any of the Creative Commons licenses
either allow, or do not allow.)

> You might also appreciate the irony of the naming: the CC
> "non-commercial" license is rational only for COMMERCIAL content

Religious content creators.

There is a long history in Christian evangelism to distribute content
gratis. Nearly every religious content creator has their own rules on
when and how the content can be used or distributed by others.  The NC
license has the potential of being a replacement of all of the
conflicting licenses, with weird clauses that religious content
distributors use in their "license".

Educational content creators.
There is a history of "fair use"allowing for educational use of
material.  In recent years, the amount of "educational use" that can
be claimed as "fair use" has greatly diminished.  The NC license can
take back "educational usage" qua "fair use" for both the creator, and
the user.

> This is why some people think that NC (and ND) licenses should not be
> advertised under the same "Creative Commons" banner as By and By-SA

+1

> The point being that these licenses have such different missions that they can't meaningfully be marketed together.

I think that Creative Common Foundation made a major mistake in using
the same brand for the NC, ND, and BY-SA licenses.

Something like
* Creative Commons should have been used for BY and BY-SA;
* Gratis Commons should have been used for BY-NC and BY-NC-SA;
* Unusable Commons should have been used for BY-NC-ND, and BY-ND;
would have been more appropriate/meaningful is terms of the license
differentiation.

xan

jonathon



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