[cc-community] Simplifying Licenses

Gisle Hannemyr gisle at ifi.uio.no
Thu Mar 5 12:31:44 EST 2009


On 05.03.2009 16:52, mp wrote:
> Gisle Hannemyr wrote:

> Good points, but what about if you use NC as a collective and not
> as an individual - then it might be difficult to find all the
> rights holders, let alone reach agreement? That is how I have
> seen NC been rejected in the past.

I think it is silly to "reject" NC just because it is possible
to create examples where the NC conditions in the basic
license do not achieve exactly what one want to achieve.

A standard license will by definition only be applicable in
a fairly limited number of clear-cut use-cases.  If you
write the license to capture a large number of highly
diverse cases, such as the use-cases that are often
concocted in "but what about ..." scenarios that invariably
pop up in discussions such as this, you increase the risk
of the license being less clear-cut.

This is very dangerous, because it will enlarge the grey area
where the licence can only be enforced by having courts
interpret the conditions in the case of a dispute.  I think
this will lessen the appeal  of CC to everyone (except,
perhaps, the lawyers that stand to profit from the ensuing
battles).

Because of this, we need to avoid large grey areas, and
the simplest way to accomplish this is to make sure that
complex conditions such as NC is defined in ways that
are clear-cut.  Unfortunately, this does not leave room
for definitions also cover various "but what about ..."
exceptions.

But all is not lost!  Rather than trying to incorporate
the grey areas into the license (where they will do
considerable harm), grey areas should be handled by
/fall-back/ solutions that is offered to users as part
of the CC overall framework

The most obvious fall-back solution is "ask the author".
This is already clearly written into the Deed of all
CC licenses - which is very good.

The second fall-back solution is fairly new, but I think it
will be very important.  This fall-back solution is called CCplus.
I guess most  readers of this list is already familiar
with it, but if not, see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus .

In your example above, I think the best solution for the
the collective would be to establish a  CCplus link for
the work and use this link to facilitate the use with
means to secure additional rights in any way they choose
(e.g. some means, such as an email-list, to contact all
right holders, or access to a single nominee trusted by
the collective to give permission on their behalf, or even
an additional custom license that, for example, gives away
additional usage rights to anyone except to people named
Rubert Murdoch ... or whatever).

> However, you are probably right (and I have added specific
> sub-sub-clauses myself in the past to specify just that)
> 
> Nevertheless, so I am told, many people have had this experience and it
> is currently part of the revision process of NC.

I can't comment on the revision process on the NC, but
I've followed this a previous debates about NC on this
list, and I think some people are trying too hard to make
the CC-licenses do too many things for too many people.
This apply to a number of the conditions, but the NC
condition is probably the condition people twist around
most. This is very dangerous.  Stretching things too far
may break them.

> Perhaps you should pay attention to that process and give input.

I've given notice that want to be part of that process, and
received some material (under non-disclosure agreement, so
I can't comment upon it in public).

I certainly follow that process and expect to participate in
the debate about the result is made public and ND no longer
apply.
-- 
- gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no - http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ]
========================================================================
    "Don't follow leaders // Watch the parkin' meters" - Bob Dylan


More information about the cc-community mailing list