[cc-licenses] New Generic and ports
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Sun Oct 8 23:50:33 EDT 2006
Rob Myers wrote:
> The problem is that if you look at CC usage, NC is the most popular
> license module.
Most people appear to think that CC-By-NC = Creative Commons License,
based on the way the words are used in press releases, webpages, etc.
Furthermore, I think it has to be realized that "most popular" is in no
way related to "best". The most popular license is ARR, by a long, long
margin. It might be argued that the fact that NC continues to be the
most popular module is a major evidence of the failing of CC to
communicate the problems with it (i.e. CC promotes NC because it's the
most popular, but it's the most popular because CC promotes it).
And while I know there *are* people who use NC advisedly, I also think
there are people who think, "Oh, 'non-commercial', that sounds good --
it's not like I plan to make any money from it" (irony intended, yes).
I had a brief email exchange with the guy who started freesound.org
(Bram de Jong) after I found out that his website, which collects
*samples* of *sounds* is almost all licensed under "CC Sampling +".
Now, of course, "Sampling" is actually a terrible license for samples of
music -- it's purpose is to allow you to *make* samples from longer
works (a sample of a sample has got to be pretty darned short). But
it's easy to see how that mistake was made. (Apparently, he's planning
to deprecate this choice in favor of By or By-NC).
I think also that people are cynically used to associating "commercial"
with "exploitative", so what they're really saying is "I don't want to
be exploited". Personally, I think that By-SA is a better way to avoid
exploitation, but I don't think it's as obvious as it should be that it
is a good choice for that.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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