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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] 4.0 NonCommercial

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn AT gmail.com>
  • To: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] 4.0 NonCommercial
  • Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:09:44 +0100

A non-profit license would be nice, but a serious question: Can anyone
come up with a globally applicable definition of non-profit?

I only have limited knowledge and am not a taxation expert. Here is
what I believe I know. Please correct me should this be incomplete:

For a given project, most non-profit organisations will sometimes make
losses and sometimes end the project with a surplus. Similarly, a
non-profit organisation may have a "profit" or a "loss" at the end of
a fiscal year. This is known to the tax authorities and they have
long-term monitoring processes and rules in places to take this into
account.

Furthermore, non-monetary benefits that a non-profit produces will be
watched by state taxation authorities. Imagine an oil company, which
has a pipeline built by a pseudo-non-profit, i.e. a company that
builds the pipeline at great expense and without being taxed and in
the end sells the finished pipeline at a price where it does NOT make
a profit, but just minor losses. This could be an attractive business
model. Fiscal authorities therefore check the intentions and purposes
of a non-profit company, society, etc. whether the non-monetary
products are in the "public interest" or "charitable". Only such
organisations achieve a fiscal non-profit status.

However, these rules are extremely complex and differ from state to
state. Can CC bind its definition of the rules to the taxation
authority rules? Are there appropriate rules in all relevant
countries? Can CC define, which rules globally are applicable and
which status-models in some countries are not?

Gregor
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.150.2189




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