[cc-community] BY-SA license in the UK has non-waivered collection society fees?

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Sun Aug 17 15:59:35 EDT 2008


On Sunday 17 August 2008 14:27:57 Kevin Phillips (home) wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Terry Hancock" <hancock at anansispaceworks.com>
> To: <cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 5:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [cc-community] BY-SA license in the UK has non-waivered
> collection society fees?
>
> > drew Roberts wrote:
> >> Wow!
> >>
> >> "2.5. All rights not expressly granted by the Licensor are hereby
> >> reserved,
> >> including but not limited to, the exclusive right to collect, whether
> >> individually or via a licensing body, such as a collecting society,
> >> royalties
> >> for any use of the Work which results in commercial advantage or private
> >> monetary compensation."
> >>
> >> That seems seriously out of place in a BY-SA license. Fine for NC, but
> >> this is
> >> crazy on first glance from someone sitting where I am.
> >
> > OTOH, "SA" "expressly grants" rights to reuse the work commercially. So
> > this would basically restrict anything that isn't granted by that part
> > of the license.
> >
> > So maybe it isn't as far reaching as it sounds?
>
> As I've mentioned before (in other threads) it kind of makes more sense to
> my simple mind that an SA license is non-waivered,

Nah, this makes it non-Free and to my mind, makes the various SA ports 
non-alike and incompatible. I need serious clarification I think. If this is, 
in fact, the way it seems to my first reading, I have serious problems with 
the UK port and don't like people being able to make derivataves of my works 
that I release under a port that has the waiver under the UK port.

Wasn't there an effort a while back to have SA "OK"ed by debian? Wouldn't this 
throw a major monkey wrench into that effort?

Under the BY-SA license, a person should be able to make any commercial or 
non-commercial use of the work so long as they meet the other terms / 
requirements of the license. Since it is a non-exclusive license, some may 
prefer to simplicity of dealing with a CS that they are already dealing with 
anyway and using a license from the CS instead of the BY-SA license, but that 
is different.

> because I see it as a 
> "commercially open" license more so than NC.  My understanding of SA is
> that you (the next in the chain) need to share alike otherwise you need a
> different license or agreement from me, the author (and other authors along
> the chain). If remix my music and you do share alike your remix, there's no
> restictions on you making money through ad streams or some other cunning
> route. Right?  Well that seems like a whole lot more enterprise friendly
> than an NC release :)  Yet the US & unported SA license contain the waiver.
>
> I would have thought with this in mind for instance, a popular group might
> want to experiement with SA, knowning that they'll at least be paid via
> their CS if their songs become popular enough to gain internet/radio play.

This is not how BY-SA should work and makes the license non-Free while other 
ports of BY-SA are Free. (At least as I see them now.) This is not a good 
situation. (If I am off my rocker in this read, someone please clear things 
up.

> It seems to me that NC has too many restrictions for such cunning
> enterprise.
>
> >> However, once again, I would ask that we consider only waiving the fees
> >> when
> >> it will actually benefit the user if we do so. I see no reason to ever
> >> waive
> >> the fees to benefit the CS or their members when it will not help us or
> >> our
> >> licensees.
> >
> > I wonder if that is the effect of the above? Since that's apparently an
> > unnecessary provision in the US, maybe that's one reason it isn't in the
> > US license (not sure about the unported).
>
> Here in the UK the CS organisations seem to be very much pulling strings as
> far as the law is concerned.  It took me unawares but really doesn't
> surprise me that the waiver isn't there in the UK license.
>
> > BTW, this is "2.0" -- is that the latest version of the UK license?
>
> I've not seen anything more recent.  This is the one the
> creativecommons.co.uk web site offers.
>
> Intersting eh?
>
> Kevin
>
> > Cheers,
> > Terry

all the best,

drew


More information about the cc-community mailing list