Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Thomas Uwe Gruettmueller <sloyment AT gmx.net>]

Hi,                                             (IANAL TINLA)

I have noticed that there is not yet a non-copyleft free content 
license on your website. Instead, you encourage people to put 
their work into the Public Domain. This is a bit problematic, 
because AFAIK, in Germany and other parts of Europe, the only 
way to do so is to die and then wait 70 years, i.e. it is not 
possible to abandon ones own copyright.

Besides that, a non-copyleft license would also be useful for 
compatibility reasons, until one day there will finally be one 
accepted *standard* copyleft license for free content (or a 
copyleft law or no copyright law anymore).

Therefore, I hereby propose the non-copyleft license below. 
Please check it for legal or logical incosistencies. Maybe you 
would like to consider adding it or a derivate thereof to your 
license collection. 

The proposed license explicitly lists all the rights that are 
enumerated in the German Authors Rights Law (s. §15 ff), thus 
explicitly allowing broadcasting, public playback etc. IMHO it 
should also list further usages that require permission under 
other jurisdictions, if there are any.

The license however features some voluntary copyleft clauses that 
are not legally binding. They are only there to clarify the 
intention of the license, but their wording would IMHO be too 
vague and ambingous to make them legally binding. It has turned 
out to be too difficult for me to design a logically consistent 
copyleft license.

cu,
Thomas }:o{#
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  Non-Copyleft Free Content License
  ---------------------------------
  
This license inteds to grant the users of a work the maximum 
of freedom, while staying compatible with other free content
licenses. This license applies to any work that has a note 
attached, stating to be is licensed under this license.


You and everybody else are granted free of charge the 
non-exclusive, perpetual right to do whatever you like with 
the work, including but not limited to the right

 * to copy or record the work,
 
 * to distribute the copies or recordings,
 
 * to exhibit the work (e.g. in its physical form),
 
 * to recite, to perform, or to otherwise realize the work,
 
 * to broadcast the work, 
 
 * to play back the work in the public (e.g. from a recording or
   transmission), and
 
 * to make it available in public networks.
 
You are also allowed to modify your copies of the works, and to 
execute the above rights on the modified work.

   
You are encouraged, but not required

 * to license your modified versions of the work to everybody
   under the same terms,
   
 * to allow other people to freely record and reuse your
   performances, and also to encourage them to do so,
   
 * to publish a note on each copy, thus informing the public
   that the work is freely licensed, and
 
 * to give the authors and performers of the work attribution.

 
THE WORK COMES AS IS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.

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