Cc-europe mailing list

[Alek Tarkowski <alek AT creativecommons.pl>]

Dear Gisle (and everyone else),

It seems that our discussion boils down to this: does promotion and
stewardship of CC licenses is a form of advocacy done differently? If
so, then CC should for example support, at least to some extent, legal
reform that makes our voluntary mechanisms part of the law itself. And
if it's not, CC should be agnostic towards any copyright reform.

I personally believe that since I am promoting voluntary mechanisms
within a copyright system and suggesting this system is flawed without
them, I should also be in favour of a reform of this system in this
direction. I am willing to accept that this is only my personal belief
and that CC's approach is more "agnostic". But at the same time I feel
that 10th anniversary is maybe a good moment to go back to basics and
ask "why are we doing this?". Especially that many of the affiliates, by
virtue of doing other projects than just CC (and probably the HQ is the
only org in our network focusing *solely* on CC licensing) are involved
in different forms of advocacy.

And the sociologist in me thinks that this would be a perfect subject
for a research study about the users of our licenses: I don't think we
have any source of knowledge beyond the anecdotal that could tell us,
are CC licenses being used in a "political" or "utilitarian" way (to
describe things very broadly).

Gisle, when you suggest that we should oppose any activities that make
CC licenses redundant - I must admit I find such an approach shocking.
But again, this all depends on the answer to the question: why do we
promote CC licenses?

All the best, and thanks for this really interesting exchange of viewpoints!

Alek

-- 
dr Alek Tarkowski
koordynator / public lead
Creative Commons Polska / Poland
www: http://creativecommons.pl
identica: http://identi.ca/alek
twitter: http://twitter.com/atarkowski