development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Ben Crowell <cceducrowell03 AT lightandmatter.com>]

David Wiley wrote:
>I have a number of friends who would freely release materials for 
>learning support if there was a way to keep governments or militaries 
>from making use of them.
This strikes me as silly, but if they want to do something that silly, they
can write their own license. Similarly, a dedicated zionists could write
a political tract and release it under a license that only allowed jews to 
copy
it, and a palestinian activist could do something similar, for arabs only.

The question is not whether there's anyone who wants a certain licensing 
scheme.
The question is whether CC should lend its name and legal expertise to it. If
people don't want to contribute to the world of free information, that's their
business, but I don't see why they deserve any help with it. The "Commons" in
Creative Commons has to mean something. It's not possible to say one is 
putting
something in the commons and yet denying access to soldiers, politicians, 
arabs, jews,
or people who talk on their cell phones while driving SUVs.

There's already plenty of computer software in the world that's available
under a restrictive license. My wife has a copy of Microsoft Word that's
licensed for educational use only. It's proprietary, not free, and there's no
reason CC should help Microsoft to promote the software or debug the license.