[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 



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