[cc-licenses] NC considered harmful? Prove it...

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Wed Mar 7 20:52:59 EST 2007


On Wednesday 07 March 2007 06:39 pm, Terry Hancock wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Okay, several people on this list (including me) are quite vocal in
> claiming that NC terms are harmful to the mechanisms of the commons. In
> other words, the claim is that they are either "do not produce a
> commons" or "produce an ineffective commons". This is mostly based on
> theory, though.
>
> Now I want to prove it. You know, with *evidence*. ;-)
>
> No facile "well it's not 'free' so it's not in the 'commons'" word
> games. I need actual empirical evidence that NC (including NC-SA) works
> do not get reused, improved, disseminated, etc. as efficiently as By or
> By-SA works do.

I am not so sure you are going to find it. You may, you may not.

In the past when I have said that we don't have a commons, I have meant just 
that. We may have multiple commons' but we certainly don't have one. 
BY-NC(etc) cannot have overlaping works with plain BY-SA. These works do not 
form the same "ground."
>
> How can we measure this?
>
> Note that this is *not* the "license confusion" issue I'm talking about
> here. I'm talking about the direct consequences of choosing an NC
> license -- the reason why Wikipedia would bomb if it tried to use NC
> licensing, or rather, evidence that attempts to build a commons around
> NC material are not successful.
>
> Of course, if you have evidence to the contrary, that is equally valuable.

Let's say that we do find the NC domain being built on in a vibrant way. 
Getting a lot of derivatives. We could easily end up with no one being able 
to profit from the best of the works in that domain. If we want artists to be 
able to earn a living from their art if they so choose and they are good 
enough in the eyes of their market, then this is something that should 
concern us.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)



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