[cc-community] What does NC means?
Alek Tarkowski
alek at creativecommons.pl
Wed Sep 19 06:43:32 EDT 2007
Terry,
You write that
> 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.
>
>
The word *revolutionary* is key here - not all members of the broad CC /
free culture movement want it to be revolutionary, which necessarily
will annoy or anger the revolutionary group, of which you are clearly
part. By the way, this tension between "revolutionaries" and
"conservatives" within a movement is natural for any social movement,
and healthy.
I understand and to some extent agree with your point about dilution of
the "free" mark, though the comparisons you make are in my opinion
exagerated and a tad unfair.
Finally, there is a perspective from which even using a NC / ND license
is revolutionary (if we agree tiny revolutions are revolutions as well)
- it's the perspective of a person switching from the default copyright.
He might be not revolutionary enough, too cautious, but he's making, a
tiny maybe, but move that supports those making bolder moves. I think
that CC licensing should be looked at not just in legal or ethical
terms, but also from a cultural perspective, as a signalling system. And
in this sense it makes sense to bundle together the licenses - because
even by using a CC NC ND license you signal your support for free
culture (even if the purists will say, you are fooling yourself and
confusing your neighbors!). And you transform yourself, as the creator
- you go ahead and make the effort to go beyond the easy and lazy
copyright default.
In Poland, where I live, a broadly defined equivalent of fair use means
that using a CC NC ND license offers almost no additional freedom to the
default scheme. So shouldn't people use this license? Of course, it
would be better to use a more free one, but I don't agree that in such a
case they better stick to copyright. Because even a restrictive CC
license offers a more clear legal layer than the convoluted default
system, and makes the movement that bit more visible.
So basically, what you consider balast, I think is actually support.
best,
Alek
ps. this might just be me, but discussions that reach a level of tens of
posts a day, written by three or four persons, furiously quoting and
re-quoting each other, cause information overload in my mind. Please
consider writing just a bit more rarely, this might make the discussion
more inclusive.
Furthermore, this is one of these cases where the theme and arguments
seem vaguely familiar. Maybe it would be good to wiki-produce a document
on this, with all the doubts, arguments and contra-arguments presented -
so that we don't have to cyclically return to them?
--
koordynator / public lead
Creative Commons Polska / Poland
skype: alektarkowski
More information about the cc-community
mailing list