Use cases for NonCommercial license clause

evan at bad.dynu.ca evan at bad.dynu.ca
Sun Apr 24 21:08:32 EDT 2005


On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 03:13:47PM -0700, Mia Garlick wrote:

> evan, firstly, apologies for taking a while to respond to your 
> email...i've been on the road....secondly, this is a great idea and 
> kinda where my mind was heading as well.  i agree with you that it's 
> important to try to clarify a little more what 'noncommercial' means 
> given CC licenses are supposed to be about clear signaling & it's 
> difficult for licensors and licensees alike to know the scope of their 
> rights and obligations if there is an ongoing uncertainty over the 
> meaning of a key term. 

I think that "commercial advantage" has been difficult. I think in the
Creative Commons community, and on this list, we've tended towards a
hard-line view: _any_ commercial use, whether selling a work for
profit, using it in advertising, or even for ancillary uses like
decorating an office or "on hold" music (!) has been deprecated.

Since you made your point about noncommercial use to the ed list,
however, I think we've been re-visiting the issue. According to what
I've read, the 1976 Copyright Act in the US was the first time that
copyright violation "for profit" was changed to "for commercial
advantage". But apparently the courts continue to read it as being
specifically for profit-making activities.

I see your point about legal advice. Perhaps "peer advice" on the
Creative Commons wiki will help shake out some of the difficult "edge
cases" and maybe some of those cases will get merged back to the main
creativecommons.org Web site, or to the FAQ, if they keep coming up.

Thanks again for your responsiveness. It's been great seeing you jump
into your work so well!

Sincerely,

~Evan



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