Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Brad Collins <brad AT studiojungle.net>]

Has anyone been working on a library declaration which can be used to
indicate that a copy held on a server is an archive copy which may or
may not be restricted?  If the licence for the item is known it can be
pointed to.....

Many countries (well, I've only looked this up here in Thailand so
far) there is provision in copyright laws for Libraries to make copies
of material for non-commercial use.

I'm working on a project which will be archiving content for a 
Library (inspired by the 10,000 year clock & library from LongNow.org)
and integrating the growing body of PD domain and free content which
is scattered around the Net in hundreds of different projects.

We intend to use archive copies for:

   a) archival purposes (keeping copyright content safe until it
   enters the public domain).

   b) creating a reference copy which anyone can point to in whole or
   part. This allows a permanent means of making references to a part of
   a text or media item.  This could be used for creating bookmarks,
   footnotes, references etc.

   c) use this reference copy as a foundation for creating public or
   private layers of annotative content.  This would allow anyone
   studying, say Orwell's Animal Farm to create a layer of notes which
   could be combined with anyone else's notes (published or private).

   d) expand the concept of a catalog beyond bibliographic information
   on books, article and other media to include subjects, biographical
   profiles of people and orgs, places, events and objects as well as
   lexical (dictionary/glosses) information and encyclopedia articles
   etc....

   e) place all of this in a faceted cataloging system based on the
   SUMO ontology.  This creates a common framework for people to link
   their own personal or group directory, web site or whatever kind of
   content subject tree to a common general subject tree.  This makes
   it easy for you so see information on the Web or in a group server
   in relationship to your personal information.  A simple example
   would be if you have an music directory on your computer, you could
   see what songs in context with information about the albums they
   are from, which songs you have and metadata about them, as well as
   metadata and associated information about what you don't have and
   ideally where you could get missing content (iTunes, Kazaa, Amazon,
   or an item you can borrow from your public library).  It could also
   be used by a big company like an aerospace company to integrate
   information from employees with departments, work groups,
   subsidiaries, venders or customers.

There is actually a lot more, but you get the idea....

So my question really is, how do archives like Brewster Kahle's stuff
or my project fit into the whole CC frame-work?  

A CC licence refers to the Expression[1](see note below) of a Work and
it's derivative Expressions and Instances of that Work.

We would be creating archive editions which would be manifestations of
public domain and sometime copyright expressions of works.  We would
keep reference copies at the library which would be instances of those
manifestions. The legality of people being able to access those
instances or to create personal copies[2] of those instances still is an
open question which we're trying to work out.  

I did a quick search through the archives but didn't see anything, so
if I missed a previous thread or this is isn't the place to ask,
please point me in the right direction.

Cheers,

b/


[1] A Work embodies the concept behind a creative work.  Expressions
of a Work are specific versions of a work (ie. the first edition of On the
Road).  A Manifestation is a specific edition of an expression, say
two different publishers releasing the same edition of a book. And
finally Instances are specific copies of a Manifestation.

[2] We're defining Personal copies as saved versions of an instance
which are not publically accessable (if it's in a public directory,
that's a form of publication). Copies made by software like browsers
which are kept in cache should not be considered copies (though I know
legally this is not always the case). Personal copies can be shared
with other people.  Sharing with people you know should be protected
clearly as fair use.  But, sharing through P2P networks (anonymous
sharing), obviously can be viewed both as personal sharing and as
publication -- and that's a whole different kettle of fish.

-------------------------
Brad Collins
brad AT chenla.org
Chenla Labs
Bangkok, Thailand