[cc-community] License Deed Icons
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Tue Mar 11 02:06:14 EDT 2008
Relating to a recent comment about creating "deeds" for non-CC licenses:
Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> <quote who="Terry Hancock" date="Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 10:20:39PM -0600">
>> Presumeably, the sponsoring organizations for those licenses could
>> provide a similar "deed" if they wanted to. Alternatively, a neutral
>> organization like http://freedomdefined.org might decide to take it on.
>
> That's a great suggestion. I think we should!
With that kind of enthusiasm, I can see this happening. It's not that
hard, after all.
What would be the trademark situation w.r.t. using the CC's by-now-very-
familiar license/deed identification symbols -- the circles with icons
to represent "By", "SA", "NC", "ND", as well as the additional ones for
the source code requirement (used in CC's GPL deed) and the "right to
copy", "right to modify" buttons?
It seems to me that if there were to be a community of "deeds" published
by various organizations, it would be highly desirable for the community
if a common graphical language were used in doing so.
I think CC asserts trademark rights in these symbols, however.
Which could lead to a possibly-unintended consequence...
If we must avoid using the CC logos, then we'll create our own (I could
trivially do this and then free-license the result), which would then
take the place of these symbols on everybody else's "deeds". This would
involve many more licenses and license stewards than CC has.
Which would then put CC in a minority position, using a non-standard
graphology. Which would probably motivate CC to adopt the new standard
symbols, and abandon their old ones, anyway.
If, OTOH, CC simply freed those symbols (NOT the (CC) symbol, of
course), then those could form the core of a standard graphology to
communicate licensing terms and rights concisely.
Opinions? Is CC interested in avoiding this consequence, or should I
just go ahead with a competing standard? Obviously, I'd be even more
happy to just extend the CC graphology than to make up a new one.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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