Cc-europe mailing list

[Paul Keller <paul AT creativecommons.org>]

On 2 Apr 2012, at 16:35, Alek Tarkowski wrote:

> 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.

Hi Alek and all, 
i fully agree with pretty much alek says here. However i find the idea that 
CC is currently not involved in advocacy quite puzzling. As far as i can tell 
CC-HQ has regularly been involved in advocacy. Examples that come to mind are 
the recent protests against SOPA/PIPA but also the work that has been 
undertaken by COMMUNIA. CC is one of the initial signatories of the Public 
Domain Manifest produced by COMMUNIA <http://www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/> 
and as far as i am concerned that advocates policy changes that go well 
beyond issues that directly affect the ability to use CC-licenses and other 
tools.

> 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?

in line with the public domain manifesto i would argue because we believe 
that the public domain needs to be expanded and one (but not the only) way to 
do so is the 'voluntary relinquishment of rights'…
/paul 

> 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
> 
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