[cc-community] What does NC means?
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Wed Sep 19 00:01:50 EDT 2007
Giorgos Cheliotis wrote:
>>On Monday 17 September 2007 02:37 pm, Giorgos Cheliotis wrote:
>>>Thanks to all who contributed something to this discussion so far,
>>>it's been interesting to follow. I understand the points
>>about "libre"
>>>and "gratis", but personally do not have much understanding
>>for fears
>>>of "contaminating" the libre movement so to say with
>>non-libre content
>>
>>>and/or ideas. CC's strength in my view lies in the fact that it is
>>>inclusive, and offers a menu of options, some of which are close to
>>>FSF licenses, and some of which are not (but are still more liberal
>>>than the usual copyright restrictions).
>>
>>I think many do not agree.
>
> That is ok by me, they do not have to :)
>
>>>A movement that is more inclusive has greater power, but will also
>>>have to make compromises to include different needs and different
>>>points of view.
>>
>>A house divided and all that???
>>
>>One major problem is that having this wide of a variety and
>>not easy way to distinguish causes confusion. Perhaps you
>>have not been exposed enough to have noticed this yet, or
>>perhaps you do not care enough about it to have noticed it,
>>but it is out there.
>
> If you are referring to the confusion that the definitions of some
> licenses can cause I understand this as a practical matter that one may
> be able to improve upon in future versions of the licenses. If on the
> other hand this is about ideological purity, this can be dangerous. Yes,
> a house divided against itself cannot stand.
The problem is that the Creative Commons quite obviously has ridden on
the coattails of the free software movement -- aping their style,
language, and ideological messages. Yet, when it comes down to the
details, they aren't following through on those ideals.
But while some of the licenses are (IMHO, at least) "Free" in the same
kind of meaningful way as the flagship free software licenses, the most
widely-used CC licenses are something else entirely -- something which
those of us who are concerned about the rise of "Free" culture don't
like to see muddying up the ideological landscape.
No one, for example, would kid themselves about what Microsoft was
trying to do with their "Shared Source" licenses: Obviously, they were
trying to take advantage of the goodwill of "Open Source" license --
WITHOUT actually making their software open source.
Most "open source" advocates would defend Microsoft's right to use just
about any licensing deal they want to. So it's not the *terms* of
"Shared Source" that are viewed as offensive.
The problem is that Microsoft is deliberately trying to confuse you into
thinking that "Shared Source" either "IS" or "IS JUST AS GOOD AS" "Open
Source". As if it were an off-brand version of the same product,
competing for consumers' interest (but which contains poisonous or
environmentally hazardous chemicals which the original doesn't, say).
The Creative Commons is regrettably behaving in much the same way as
Microsoft -- making "not quite free" or perhaps "not free at all"
licenses which are branded in such a way as to make them seem as if they
are all part of the same broad movement.
Microsoft's "Shared Source" and CC's "NC" and "ND" licenses are merely
more friendly adjuncts to existing market practices. They do not
represent revolutionary change. They're still "non-free" licenses.
On the other hand, truly "free" licenses, like the By, By-SA, GPL, etc,
are revolutionary. They create a wholly-different kind of marketplace
and community. This distinction is REAL and SHARP.
Hiding it by lumping the elements together into the CC modular licenses
doesn't remove that real boundary. It just hides the reality from
licensors and licensees, which makes it that much harder to talk about
the revolutionary ideas of free culture.
The situation is no different from commercial suppliers who try to
co-opt and dilute the "Green" or "Organic" labels on food products by
provided conventional "factory farm" products with misleading labelling.
Conscientious consumers, who are making decision they hope are socially
beneficial get duped. And that's unethical.
The "Free" label is the same: people who want to participate in "free
culture", want it to stand up to some kind of verifiable standard. Sure,
you can read the fine print and find out for any particular product
whether it really is "Green" or "Organic" or "Free" by your own
particular standards -- but the whole point of labels is to eliminate
the need for such caveats, by providing a mark that people can recognize
and trust.
CC has subverted that by using the same mark to mean a whole lot of
conflicting things. This isn't the same as saying that those things
shouldn't exist -- I can personally think of practical things I might
want to use the NC licenses for. But CC has long sense established a
practice of advertising "Creative Commons Licensing" rather than
particular, functuonally-related licenses.
I think this was ultimately accidental. I think that the writers of the
CC license modules really didn't think they would create so many
incompatibilities. They ignored the real boundary because they didn't
see it, or didn't know exactly where it lay, not because they wanted to
dupe people.
But after the fact, it's still a problem.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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