[cc-licenses] Founders as a module? was Re: Getting to Version 3.0
Rob Myers
rob at robmyers.org
Fri May 19 16:03:41 EDT 2006
On 19 May 2006, at 20:21, Greg London wrote:
>> My question, to reiterate, is 'What's the difference between a
>> "NON-copyleft free license" (e.g. MIT, BSD, CC-By) and "Public
>> Domain"?'
>
> The only practical difference that I know of occurs for licenses
> that have accumulative requirements.
Yes attribution. That, and a copyright is retained, so the work could
be relicensed proprietary (but not exclusively).
> The CC-Wiki license fixes the cululative effect of the CC-BY,
> because it allows attribution to be handed over to a single
> website or similar organization.
CC-Wiki became the 2.5 group attribution clause. The Wiki badge just
redirects to BY-SA 2.5 .
IANAL but this clashes with the moral right of attribution and so IMO
really should not be used outside the US, or in international
projects. I personally think the solution is FSF-style assignment,
not attribution hacks.
> The only other difference I can think of relates to Moral Rights.
> I'm not so familiar with all the details of Moral Rights,
> but my understanding is that they cannot be licensed away.
They can be waived in Canada and the UK but elsewhere they are
inalienable. The CC-UK licences (for Scotland and for England &
Wales) explicitly retains the right of integrity, I think the CC-CA
license leaves the option open for the licensor.
I do not, personally, think that Founders should be a module. It is a
very elegant solution, but we just need one case of someone deciding
they don't want their work to become BY after 5 years for this to be
a PR (and ethical) disaster. Founders has already been used for FUD.
Possibly CC could work with a third party to do a time-release
scheme, but I don't think CC should do it themselves, and I do not
think time-release is a good idea. We need less uncertainty and
conditions in copyright, not more.
- Rob.
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