[cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses

James Grimmelmann james at grimmelmann.net
Sat Dec 2 10:17:04 EST 2006


Greg London wrote:
>> On Wed, 2006-29-11 at 21:20 +0000, Rob Myers wrote:
>>
>>>>   Since the dominant argument against parallel distribution on this
>>>>   list seems to boil down to a critique that the clause provide a way
>>>>   to sidestep copyleft,
>>> The clause provides a way of removing people's rights.
>> That's simply not true. Nobody loses any rights from having the clause
>> added, and your net freedom is greater with a parallel distribution
>> clause than without it.
> 
> Don't get too tripped up in the language.
> The whole thing must be looked at in the context of the timeline.
> 
> Start at the point when Copyleft/ShareAlike licenses were created.
> DRM wasn't considered at the time.
> 
> Move forward in time until DRM is considered an issue for
> Copyleft and ShareAlike licenses.
> 
> Why was it considered an issue to Copyleft/ShareAlike licenses?
> Because DRM allows platform monopolies, which allow someone
> to effectively take a work private on a hardware platform.

This timeline is wrong.  The anti-DRM clause has been part of the CC 
licenses since version 1.0.

See, e.g.:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/legalcode

I don't think your points depend on the timeline, but this seems like a 
detail worth getting right.

James



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