[cc-community] What does NC means?

Fred Benenson fred.benenson at gmail.com
Wed Sep 19 01:14:25 EDT 2007


Arguing by analogy is dangerous, and I see a couple of problems with it.

First: while "Shared Source" is directly competing with the GPL and perhaps
causing confusion, CC had no real corollary at it's inception. The GFDL is
not totally free (read: invariant sections are confusing and non-free, just
as some would argue NC clauses are confusing and non-free), and did not
apply to non-textual work. Furthermore, releasing work into the public
domain was difficult, if not impossible.

On top of that, Microsoft has a particular specific financial interest in
confusing the notion of shared source and open source and free software.
Creative Commons, does not have an analogue interest -- they're a non-profit
organization with little to gain financially with the confusion of "free
culture."

There's this stubborn insistence by some members of this community to assume
that CC is constantly broadcasting that all of their licenses are equivalent
to free culture. I do not think this is the case nor their intention.
Creative Commons calls its suite of licenses creative commons licenses, not
free culture licenses.

RMS was able to define a term -- free software in a particular way, so why
can't Creative Commons come to mean something in its own right? To assume
that the general public is incapable of understanding the differences
between licenses, and free culture in general, is a condescending and
patronizing perspective. I've found that many people I know have come to
discover the various meanings of the licenses independent of my explaining
them.

What does Creative Commons mean? Some rights reserved -- it depends on the
license and the work, and now it's a bit easier to figure out what those
are. Creative Commons needs to do a better job at signaling these things,
but I think it's headed in the direction. It's also a shame that the
signaling isn't as binary as it is with the GPL, but that is a reality we
must accept as a consequence of the ambitiousness of the CC mission. Instead
of offering one license for one very specific niche of work, CC offers many
licenses for many different kinds of works.

Take photography for example. What does it mean for me, as a photographer to
publish a work freely? Besides its particular license (believe it or not)
and subsequent copyright status, there are a lot of considerations to take
into account in deciding whether or not a photograph is free.

First, was I able to take the photograph freely? If it was in public, that
should be the case, but suppose I wasn't in public. When should I be free to
take that photograph?

Moreover, the subjects of my photograph can greatly influence whether or not
I can use it freely.  I cannot, for example, use a photograph of my neighbor
in an advertisement for a product he doesn't endorse. This has nothing to do
with copyright, but is an obvious, though arguably needed, constraint on my
freedom on my photos and my work as a photographer.

What if I publish my photograph without metadata? Many budding photographers
learn from each other's techniques by discovering the metadata from a
particular photo. If I withhold this information am I making my photograph
less free?

Do I need to publish my negatives? RAW Files? They're the rough equivalent
to source code in photography, and are certainly the "preferred working
format" of photography, but are certainly not required to share and learn
from a piece.

These are all questions that photographers have struggled with since the
inception of the photograph, and have yet to come to total consensus on.

Anyway, I raise them as examples of the complications inherent to finding
"free culture" in media outside of software. Many creators in many other
mediums haven't come to terms with what it means for their work to be free,
and a copyright license may only be part of the solution.


F




On 9/19/07, Terry Hancock < hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
>
> 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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>
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