Cc-au mailing list

["Graham Bassett" <bassett AT ozemail.com.au>]

Dear all,

 

 

The launch at QUT of the CC license for Oz conditions misses a vital point.

 

CC licenses (and the open source movement in general) is supported by people where Egoboo is important.  It is important because the participants usually have some other form of income.  Thus academics, programmers employed by others, teachers, government workers etc can afford to give away their content as they have something other than Egoboo to pay the bills.

 

A more relevant scenario for a privatised society with a community-minded spirit is a situation where a copyright owner wants to distribute work for attribution, to keep control over derivatives so they can be shared by all and yet gain some income from license fees.

 

What then is the position of a registered non-profit organisation (NPO) with Deductible Gift Recipient status.  Let us say a particular NPO works in a set geographic area and develops manuals and training material over which it has copyright.  Other communities in the country hear about it and ask for copies of the material to help them establish similar NPOs.  The head NPO wants attribution, to force others to share derivatives BUT also license fees for their material in order to create an income stream.  The license fees are calculated on a "cost recovery" basis by the head NPO in order to cover costs of staff that have contributed to creation of the IP works and costs of distribution.  The latter costs would be minimal as the head NPO would only distribute PDF files from an area of a web site which the licensee can access once they have paid the license fee.

 

This potentially contravenes the following clause:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

However, a NPO is not aimed towards profit.  Its prime function is not for "commercial advantage". 

In addition, the license allows P2P  and other sharing of copyrighted works "provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works."  Does this mean that copyrighted works that are given over to other NPOs under this license can charge license fees without contravening providing it does not involve monetary payment in exchange for other works?

Cheers,

Graham Bassett