[cc-community] What does NC means?

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Sun Sep 16 09:24:18 EDT 2007


On Sunday 16 September 2007 04:43 am, Giorgos Cheliotis wrote:
> Although I understand that the definition of NC can be tricky, I don't see
> why there is strong resentment for NC licenses on the part of some of us in
> the community. Like it or not, there are many people out there who are keen
> to allow for free sharing, distribution and possibly also remixing of their
> work, as long as it is not commercial in nature.

Sure there are, but some of us don't see that they are a part of the same 
community we consider ourselves a part of. And we don't particularly like the 
confusion that comes from this.

Personally, I don't get why an artist would want to prevent another artist 
from putting a little food on his table.
>
> By choosing for example a BY-NC-ND license, an author makes the important
> step of legitimizing file-sharing of his/her work, as the license at the
> very least allows for non-commercial sharing. Sure, many will share works
> anyhow, irrespective of the licensing, and will wrongly call it "fair use",
> or will argue that some forms of "piracy" are beneficial, but the important
> difference is that when an author voluntarily chooses a BY-NC-ND license,
> you can share that work all you want, *legally*. If every work in the world
> currently under full copyright restrictions would be licensed instead under
> BY-NC-ND (unlikely, but just for the sake of argument) we would have
> effectively legitimized file-sharing. Wouldn't that be some form of
> progress towards a more free culture?

Not sure it would really. NC is really a bear and ND is so totally non-commons 
it is not funny.
>
> Also, on whether SA is all you need: Larry has explained a few times that
> NC is not so much needed for software, and is therefore not used by FSF,
> because using software for commercial projects will usually entail some
> form of adaptation/derivation, so the SA constraint is enough to keep
> software free. But, unlike OSS, cultural works can have significant value
> as stand-alone products and thus are not sufficiently protected with SA (it
> is my understanding that the SA constraint only kicks in when a derivative
> work is produced, to dictate how that derivative should be licensed, so it
> does not protect the original work in its original form).

And I disagree. (Except that I feel Sa needs a little more kick as I have 
proposed before.) There are many programmers who make the argument that the 
GPL (kinda like SA for the sake of this argument) is not enough to let 
rpogrammers earn their daily bread either.
>
> If we remove NC from the licenses we will effectively shut the doors of CC
> to a huge number of authors who are prepared to give their audience some
> freedom, but wish to preserve some avenues of commercial exploitation for
> themselves. That would be a mistake and probably lead to the
> marginalization of the movement. 

Well, I don't consider us all a part of the same movement so that does not 
particularly worry me. But I would be quite happy for CC to just adopt a Free 
CC brand and put BY ans BY-SA under that brand and leave the rest under the 
plain old CC brand.

Then those of us who care about the Free bit can promote Free CC and we would 
not have to have these arguments over and over again.

> If, on the other hand, the main problem is 
> that NC is not defined clearly enough, then the lawyers among us can help
> by defining it better in future versions of the licenses. 

This is a huge problem for all who do use the NC stuff.

> Lastly, I do 
> agree that probably some of the authors who choose NC or ND constraints do
> so for the wrong reasons. Then those who know better or think they know
> better will have to work towards convincing the rest that they should adopt
> another license, but they will have to do it one person at a time. 

Yes, force is not really needed here. Except perhaps along some of the lines I 
put forward for discussion here:

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

> Trying 
> to force them into more liberal licensing by removing the most popular
> license types from the CC framework (BY-NC-ND and BY-NC-SA) will just make
> these authors leave CC.

To me,the damage to CC has already been done. Give those who want Free a Free 
CC brand and let's move on.

Some of the other proposals I have seen may indeed have been much better if 
adopted from the start, but I don't know if CC can recover a sane meaning 
after all that has already happened.
>
> I have just finished a paper on these topics with my co-authors, and will
> share it with the community soon, after getting it peer-reviewed. I
> certainly do not claim to have all the answers and I am always learning
> something new from this mailing list, but in the paper we deal with exactly
> these topics, so I felt compelled to respond :)
>
> Giorgos

all the best,

drew
>
> From: cc-community-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of jonathon
> Sent: Sun 9/16/2007 1:24 PM
> To: cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [cc-community] What does NC means?
>
> Milos wrote:
> > more useless then I was thinking before (I was thinking that it is just
> > useless).
>
> I do see a place for CC-BY-NC-SA.
> It just does not do what most people seem to think it does.
>
> Perhaps there is a place for the  CC-BY-NC-ND license, but I haven't found
> one. I'd suggest that 99% of the people who select this license (BY-NC-ND),
> did so thinking that it covered something that it does not cover.
>
> > I think that there is a need for protecting authors in some cases.
>
> What of an author's needs protection?
> How does it need protection?
>
> What problems/issues are you trying to solve?
>
> >And I think that CC should work on such kind of issues.
>
> Creative Commons Foundation is literally pioneering
> cross-jurisdictional licensing law.
>
> Consider one little detail:
> * In Anglo-American law (US) a contract requires consideration;
> * In Roman-Dutch law (South Africa) a contract does not require
> consideration; * I've forgotten my Code Napoleon (France) but consideration
> is
> treated differently, than under either Anglo-American law, of
> Roman-Dutch law.
> That difference is why the Creative Commons Licenses are contracts in
> some countries, but not in other countries.
>
> > But, it seems that CC doesn't work properly to protect authors rights.
>
> It does, and it doesn't.
> * Licenses are hard work;
> * The Creative Commons Licenses are not geared to specific mediums.
> This make them even harder to craft;
>
> What is needed, is one of two things:
> * Licenses crafted for each specific medium.  painting, photography,
> sculpture, dance, music, databases, novels, etc;
> * The abolishment of NC and ND licenses;
>
> > I think that I will use only GPL and GFDL until SFDL would be finished.
>
> GPL is unusable for creative expression.
> (What is the "source code" of a ballet?   What is the source code of a
> document in Moon?)
>
> GFDL has a different set of issues, ensuring that it creates non-libre
> content.
>
> SFDL fails the DRM Dave scenario, which means that although it
> ostensibly meets Freedoms 0 thru 3, you can still end up with
> something that is non-free by design.
> ( Debian-Legal can justify why something that is non-free can be
> called "libre".  They were the one's who made that determination.)
>
> xan
>
> jonathon
>
> I am not a lawyer.   This is not legal advice.  Consult a lawyer for
> sound legal advice.
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