[cc-community] Reducing The Number Of Licenses

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Fri Mar 6 08:24:32 EST 2009


On Friday 06 March 2009 04:50:43 Alan Cox wrote:
> > 	ND has no justification.  We should eliminated ND.  Indeed we can
> > reduce the number of licenses to just 3:
>
> ND is very much neccessary because there are many many works where
>
> - the author does not wish the work distorted to represent a different
>   viewpoint
> 	(This is one of the big concerns of the UK government for example)
> - it represents a specific record whose modification may mislead later
>   (eg a photographic record of an event, or minutes of a meeting)
> - there may be legal or regulatory constraints on modification
> 	- games for sale in some countries (age rating)
> 	- video for sale in many countries (age rating)
> 	- wireless device firmware (regulatory requirements)
> 	- safety data sheets

And are there no other ways to ensure this than and ND license? And, honestly, 
ND seems it would be ineffective as a solution to a lot of this. All Rights 
Reserved doesn't seem to do the job for a lot of the big boys now.

For instance, in the case of the regulation examples above. Would not those 
very regulations control the allowable modifications / derivatives no matter 
what the copyright license says?

As I said in a recent post, we need a new understanding of freedom now that 
people are beginning to widely use Free licenses. Surely you are no more 
to "blame" should someone distort you writing to represent a different 
viewpoint that if they distort your code to kill people on the battlefield?
>
> and of course if you talk to many creative authors they see some of their
> output as a complete piece of expression and want to share it but not
> have people messing with their created space so need +ND (or CC+ and
> 'translations permitted')

They need to get over it. Unless of course they invented a complete new 
culture, language, etc. and created the new work in that. If they "stood on 
the shoulders of giants" though, it is time to give it up. There may be a 
pleasant surprise and the new work may be even more to their liking than the 
one they made. Or perhaps that is the fear?

all the best,

drew


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