[cc-licenses] New Generic and ports
Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts
cc-licenses at lists.ibiblio.org
Mon Oct 9 15:07:20 EDT 2006
Terry wrote:
>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.
I'll address the NC issue this way:
There are a number of religious organizations that create material that
is designed to be shared with other people. [Religious instruction,
Tracts, Translations of Sacred Texts, etc.]
What they want, is for people to be able to use/reproduce their material
for specific situations, giving them (the original organization) credit
for the material that is used. What they don't want is
people/organizations selling/charging a reproduction fee for the
material, unless a royalty is paid to them. [Typically, these
organizations survive because of the royalty payments they receive.]
Obviously each organization can (and traditionally) has crafted their
own "terms of use". There is no uniformity in those "terms of use".
For the religious (or educational) body that is using the material,
trying to decipher the ins and outs of each of those "terms of use"
addendum to the "all rights reserved" status is a time consuming process
-- that can be difficult to implement. [More than one church has gone
"Oops, we can't use that translation in this document, because we quote
101 verses, and their licence only permits us to copy 100 verses."]
For an organization, dealing with "small users" can cost more than the
income from the royalty brings in. [These are typically scaled
according to number of copies created, and amount of text that is used.
some organizations simply set a base amount, and then add the per
copy/per word charge to royalty fee.]
The issue with the By-SA licence in this situation, is that the
organization is literally cutting off their oxygen supply. If they
wanted to do that, they would simply use the Public Domain Licence.
To simplify matters for both sides, the use of a standard licence
significantly lowers operating costs. The CC-NC licence _appears_ to fit
that bill. [I'm not sure it does, because of some of the implications in
the current CC Guidelines about what it means.(I've written elsewhere
about my issues with the CC take on what "NC" permits, and what it denies.)]
Drew wrote:
> And if "Creative Commons" was instead called "Better Copyright
Options"
I think people are treating it as "Better Copyright Options", purely
because CC has provided several options to the standard "All Rights
Reserved". Instead of having to write a licence for their work, the
creator simply grabs a licence that they think does what they want. [
I've seen several instances where an organization has chosen a CC
Licence, and explained why they chose it --- and the reasons for
choosing it are totally out of phase with what the licence accomplishes.]
Whilst CC would like material to be in an electronic commons, about the
only group that thinks that way are people who sample music, or video
--- and maybe a few gamers.
xan
jonathon
More information about the cc-licenses
mailing list