[cc-community] NC, anticapitalism and clashing visions of freedom - was: More discussion on NC
j.martin.pedersen
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk
Fri Oct 15 13:00:38 EDT 2010
On 15/10/10 15:11, Paul Houle wrote:
> On 10/15/2010 8:29 AM, j.martin.pedersen wrote:
>> This turned into quite a long mail. I had the feeling that the
>> conversation was too much at cross-purposes and that one of the
>> sentiments behind desiring NC - namely the anti-corporate,
>> anti-capitalist - with respect to ideas of freeedom and in that
>> particular context in relation to Free Software and Free Culture
>> conceptions of freedom, was rather unclear.
>>
>
> I dunno, one reason for "NC" licensing is that some people want to
> reserve the right to make money for themselves; copyright protection,
> patents, trademarks and similar devices are there, primarily, so
> people who produce something can have a (regulated) monopoly so they can
> profit from it. Making content "NC" can be a very capitalistic thing to
> do.
>
> If I'm going to get hot and bothered, it's over the connection
> between "NC" and academia. Now, maybe things are different in other
> countries, but here in the U.S. it's becoming recognized that the
> university system is a major driver of social inequality. Colleges
> often destroy young people's careers before they start by saddling them
> with tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in
> debt. Colleges also have a (nearly) exclusive license to suck from the
> public tit to do research. I feel insulted when academics release
> materials under an NC license, because (i) I've already paid for it
> with my taxes, and (ii) I don't see that academic and non-profit
> organizations are any more virtuous than commercial organizations.
>
> To take an example, at some point I'm going to have to make a set
> of boundary polygons for 2nd level administrative divisions for all the
> countries on Earth. This already exists, in a product called "GADM",
> but GADM is "NC". I'm going to have to merge data from data sources
> that are (more or less) CC0, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA and spend probably a
> man*week or so get something that won't be quite as good. After putting
> me through that work, I'm tempted to slap a "non-academic" clause on
> the license.
>
> I make educational resources available free on the web; free to
> students, teachers, and other interested people of all levels. It
> costs money and time to do this, so I feel it's perfectly fair to make
> a little cash with advertising. Contrast that to private unis that
> charge $40k a year and admit kids that are barely housebroken if their
> parents are rich.
I pretty much agree with all of this. However, it seems to me to be a
rather different tangent of the NC discussion than I was engaging in,
but you are certainly right about universities being commercial
enterprises. For sure.
-martin
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