[cc-community] avoiding the CC licensing path by rights users
Fred Benenson
fred.benenson at gmail.com
Mon Apr 14 12:47:50 EDT 2008
This is a poor assumption to make and is based off a hazy and purposely
vague generalization about corporations behavior that may very well not hold
true for much longer. In fact, it does a disservice to everyone working in
the free culture community to propagate this assumption.
There will almost certainly be "a big corporation" who doesn't mind the
BY-SA stipulation and uses the work according to the original author's
chosen license. In this case, if the user had chosen BY-SA to avoid "feeling
ripped off by a big corporation" they will almost certainly be disappointed
in the protections offered by the BY-SA license (or any other copyleft one,
for that matter) as the "big corporation" will still be free to use the
work, so long as they don't prevent others from using it.
While the work's freedom is protected by the copyleft stipulation, the
author feeling not "ripped off" probably won't be, as the consolation "Don't
worry, *other* people can use your work too, the corporation can't retain
control over it" will simply not be enough.
Yes, we can and should work to encourage creators to release their work as
freely as possible, but this perspective is a blunt and often
confrontational one to take with creators who are considering releasing
their work digitally, and sometimes, it can do more harm than good.
F
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 4:44 PM, John Hendrik Weitzmann <
jhweitzmann at mx.uni-saarland.de> wrote:
>
> a good way around the "a big corporation is going to take my stuff"
> problem is to use a license with the share alike (SA) option in it, such
> as BY-SA. Multinational corporations usually - due to internal rules -
> cannot easily redistribute their own material under copyleft conditions,
> which they would have to in order to abide by the SA option.
>
> greetz,
> John
>
>
> Barbara Bowen schrieb:
> > Hello, CC Community Folks,
> >
> > I just joined this discussion list yesterday. I've read today's emails,
> > but not all those in the archives.
> >
> > I'd appreciate any thoughts you may be willing to share about the
> > following situation.
> >
> > I am advising a non-profit that is working with teachers and wants to
> > share the work products the teachers have developed with the wider
> > education community.
> >
> > It's okay with them if other educators incorporate chunks of a document
> > as part of a new document as long as they cite the original author and
> > that it's not for commercial purposes.
> >
> > I thought a CC "Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial" License would
> > be a way to accomplish this. But from what I've read in today's posts,
> > it appears the CC License may simply be confusing, rather than
> > facilitative, partly because it's still in its early stages of becoming
> > a commonly recognized and used practice.
> >
> > Anyone willing to weigh in on whether you think the benefits of using
> > the CC License, e.g,, posting in Open Education Resources (OER), and
> > being on the "leading edge" os sharing work via the web, are worth the
> > potential confusion.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Barbara
> > - -
> > Barbara Bowen, PhD
> > Managing Director
> >
> > http://www.soundknowledgestrategies.com
> > 360.774.6192
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 4/10/08 11:22 AM, "Matthew J. Agnello" <matt.agnello at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Agreed. One of the weaknesses of CC is that without some sort of
> > marking within the work, there's no guarantee that a link to CC
> > somewhere near the work means the work is licensed under those
> > terms. We all assume links equal licenses, even the tiny, difficult
> > to find ones on Flickr, and perhaps a court would agree. But big
> > companies like contracts, /especially/ if they have to answer to
> > Errors and Omissions insurance people who are notoriously picky
> > about what constitutes copyright infringement.
> >
> > So, the problem is connecting work and license, and a company would
> > rather verify that connection through a traditional contract than by
> > taking a risk with a "random photograph on a random website using a
> > random license," as jonathan said.
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> > cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>
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