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cc-licenses - Re: NonCommercial and recovering costs

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: James Grimmelmann <james.grimmelmann AT yale.edu>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: NonCommercial and recovering costs
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 17:11:23 -0700

At 02:31 PM 6/22/2004, Evan Prodromou wrote:

I figure I could also make books for other people and give them away,
either for myself or as a service (a la the Internet Bookmobile). (There
have been some questions about whether I could do this to promote my
business -- say, by giving away copies of a book at the store.)

This case is related to the banner-ad cases, where an archive of CC content is supported by (or generates surplus revenue by) having advertising tied to it.

I also believe that if I started a Free Media Cooperative* in my
hometown, where dues-paying members supported the coop, we could have
shared printing facilities and make copies for ourselves or others
there.

This is also an interesting case, since it involves charging for access to a pool of content, but the overall enterprise is not profit-making. The language in the licenses about file-sharing (receipt of other copyrighted works is not considered "commercial advantage or private monetary compensation") strikes me as relevant.

> The murkier question is whether the Internet cafe or the printers is
> engaged in a "commercial" use.

I should have been more clear: that was my main question.

Yeah, so I figured. But I didn't want to FUD anyone by accident, so I wanted to be clear that this law student reads the license as licensing personal copies before setting off into less clear territory.


So, I am not a lawyer, and I don't know anything worth knowing, but I
wonder if there's any way to think of my use of this printing service as
a "tool" to get the job done, in the same way as I use my own LaserJet
printer or bookbinding machine to get the job done. It's just that this
tool is made of people and runs on money. B-)

Yeah. Sean had a similar sense. So have some other people I've talked to.


> Now, for my question. Do folks on this list think it _should_ be a
> violation of the NonCommercial license for the Internet cafe and the
> printers to make these copies?

I don't really think nc is a good idea, so I'm gonna have to slip my
head into the NonCommercial-licensors space for a second to try to
understand it.

Thanks.

Anyways, for the person who's worried about "giving away" their work and
then seeing it on the shelves at every Waldenbooks in the country, the
single printer making a single copy for me is probably not a problem.

But there's another class of people who use NC: creators who see it as a
de facto restriction on the medium of use. Printing out an entire book
on your own is time-consuming and expensive (paper, toner, whatever);
these folks figure you'll get a taste for the book in electronic form,
but after a couple of hours of eye-strain you'll get sick of that and
buy the paper volume from their publisher. So, I think, for these
people, taking out the de facto barrier would be a problem.

Hmmm. Useful point.

Here's where I think we cross some kind of rubicon, although I can't say
it makes any legal sense or difference. To me, there's a difference
between myself using a company as a tool to get a task done, and a
company offering a menu of services or goods. I realize that that
probably doesn't have much legal bearing, but I'd see them as different
beasts.

In a sense, what you do when you write a license is figure out where to draw the lines that make legal differences. The question is whether those are a good distinctions to draw, ones where everyone can look at a company or a service and agree on which side it falls.

This "tool" vs "menu" idea is interesting. I'll think some more on it.


Thank you a jillion for doing this; sorry I can't provide any more
feedback.

No, thank you. This has been very helpful.

James





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