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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: public domain question
  • Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:26:22 -0500 (EST)


drew Roberts said:
> Greg London wrote:
>> Draw the set of copyleft ONLY, and there is no option to take a public
>> domain work and make it proprietary. that is OUTSIDE of copyleft.
>> It is something you CANNOT DO in copyleft. You need copyright law to do it.
>
> There is no copyleft law, copyleft is copyright applied in a certain way.
> All
> rights reserved is copyright lay applied in a certain way. Right?

I never said there was copyleft law. don't know where that came from.
What I said is that copyleft is a SUBSET of copyright.
You say copyleft is copyright applied in a certain way.
I say copyleft is a subset of copyright.

There are many things you can do in Free Speech and Copyright
that you cannot do under copyleft alone.

>>
>> The individual cannot make a proprietary fork in a world where only
>> copyleft exists.
>
> We don't live in that world. Should we or shouldn't we is another
> discussion,
> but we don't.

But the point is simply that copyleft by itself does not allow
all the things that are possible under copyright. It is a subset of copyright.

And if Free Speech is a superset of copyright and copyright is a superset
of copyleft, then that means that Copyleft is a sub-sub-set of free speech.

Which simply means that "free as in free speech" is
a bad metaphor for copyleft.

>>
>> Copyleft is all about taking works created by individuals,
>> and adding it to the community pool of works,
>> and making sure no one can take them OUT of the community pool.
>
> In the world in which we live. I can put a work in the copyleft pool. I can
> taked the same work and put it in the "proprietary" pool. I can also put a
> derivative work in the "proprietary" pool, even if I don't put it in the
> copyleft pool. I can also sell the rights to make derivative works of the
> copyleft work and keep them "proprietary"... Right?

Yeah. But in the copyright world, I can take someone elses work that is
BSD and create a derived work and hold it completely proprietary.

That simply isn't allowed under copyleft. You need copyright to do that.

Copyleft is a subset of copyright. There are things that you cannot do
under a copyleft system, things that have to occur under a copyright system
to be allowed. And Free Speech includes copyright. So copyleft is far
more restrictive than Free Speech. So free speech is a bad metaphor.

>>
>> That isn't about individual freedom being protected against
>> abuse by the community or state. That's about creating and
>> protecting a community and protecting against individuals
>> who could otherwise create proprietary forks.
>>
>> Simple argument,
>> copyleft is a subset of all that is copyright.
>> If only copyleft existed, you would not have the
>> same individual freedoms that you do now with copyright
>> as a superset. You would not be able to create a proprietary
>> work in a world where only copyleft existed.
>
> Again, we don't live in that world.

SO WHAT? The point is that even in todays world, there are things
that you can only do outside of copyleft. Copyleft is far more restrictive
than copyright or free speech. That is true now, in the real world.

So equating copyleft with free speech is a bad metaphor.

Copyleft isn't about individual freedom the way free speech is about
individual freedom. Copyleft is about community building and protecting
anything that is added to the community from ever being taken private.



>> Copyleft is about preventing individual ownership
>> to protect the community as a whole.
>
> In the world in which we live, copyleft does not prevent individual
> ownership.
> If I GPL a program I wrote, I still own the copyrights to it, I have just
> given a license to use the work I own under certain conditions. I am
> preventing an individual from taking MY WORK and makeing a derivative work
> which he then locks me out of. If copyleft did not exist and I released the
> same work under the standard copyright all rights reserved, those same
> restrictions would exist for that individual. In the world in which we live,
> that individual can pay me in either situation (copyleft or all rights
> reserved0 and I can allow him to make that derivative work. Right?
>
> all the best,
>
> drew
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>


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