[cc-community] using Creative Commons as a fig leave

Gisle Hannemyr gisle at ifi.uio.no
Tue Jul 7 10:16:48 EDT 2009


On 07.07.2009 06:02, Mike Linksvayer wrote:

> Lots of people have had the inspiration to map ToSes (and privacy
> policies) to "human readable" icons and explanations, and metadata ...
> inspired by CC licenses. I think it turns out to be pretty complex,
> because as far as I know nobody has gotten very far.  Certifying that
> a ToS meets some standard (even if that standard mainly says what a
> ToS cannot include) may be more tractable.  Sounds pretty interesting.
> But consider this wild speculation on my part.  I do think it would be
> incredibly difficult to get adoption of such a certification, and
> that's not wild speculation.

Actually, a company known as TRUSTe claims that 2468 sites has adopted
its privacy policy certificate.   That's pretty impressive.
However, of 2139 license investigations into policy violations,
only 4 has resulted in termination.  That is less impressive,
given the general abysmal state of privacy on the Internet.

Source:  http://www.truste.org/about/fact_sheet.php

Looking into a particular example, I become even impressed by the
TRUSTe® Privacy Seal.

Take a look at this page:
  http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

About one screenfull down there is the TRUSTe® Privacy Seal that
certifies the trustworthyness of Facebook's privacy policies.
Clicking the seal takes one to a "Deed"-type page that says
the following:

  "Facebook, Inc. is a certified licensee of the TRUSTe® Privacy Seal
   Program. The privacy statement and practices of www.facebook.com
   have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with our strict
   program requirements."

IMnsHO, Facebook has one of the worst privacy policies and
practices in the business. I'm thinking about things such as
accumulation and use of user data for targeted advertising
(the same data may also be used for political surveillance
and sinister data mining, given that the "right" (or wrong)
people gain access to this data), its claim of ownership of
user's personal data, blatant past transgressions  such as
collection data about users external of internal surfing
history through the Beacon program, and a number of design
flaws that allows personal data to leak to third parties
through malware applications.  The list goes on.

TRUSTe was founded i 1997 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(a NGO with some similar goals to CC).  Source:
   http://www.truste.org/about/fact_sheet.php
and count some very respected industry leaders and academivs
among in its Advisory Council:
   http://www.truste.org/about/management.php

I think that what the example of TRUSTe shows, is that a NGO
background, an impressive Advisory Council and (presumable)
honourable intentions is not enough.
Implementing and policing a ToS seal is a /very/ complex thing
to do, and that creating a seal with the best of intentions and
doing a bad job of policing it, will mislead the public and
therefore (IMHO) do more harm tham good.

Also, I agree with Paul that the problem with the Tribe of Noise
(ToN) is not its dual licensing as such. Creating a seal that
in some way limits the type of dual licensing a host can
deploy is IMHO not a good idea.  Not only because it is
difficult to police such a seal (as I think the TRUSTe example
shows), but also because I think that such a seal this will be
an impediment to good business models as well as bad.

What the ToN "case" boils down to, is this:

1) ToN's is not up front and transparent about what uploading
   content to the site entails.  The video you see when you
   click on "more info" on the front page and the FAQ leaves
   the clear expression that CC BY-SA is the sole license used
   by the site.  They need to make its own parallel license
   equally visible.

2) The parallel license ToN offers its users is an unbalanced
   license that is unfair to artists.  They need to change that
   license that gives artists the option to opt out of the
   parallel license, and some real incentive not to do so
   (e.g. profit sharing within a CC++ framework).

I've read Hessel van Oorschot's protests here and on Paul's
blog, but the only way he can make himself believable is to
fix the two problems with his service: lack of transparency
in the site's promo material and FAQ, and changing an unfair
license into one that is fair to artists.

-- 
- gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no - http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ]
========================================================================
    "Don't follow leaders // Watch the parkin' meters" - Bob Dylan


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