Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

James Grimmelmann said:
> I would disagree that Creative Commons has "a" model.

You said the most common license was CC-NC-SA, which
supports my notion that CC has "a" model. Or at the
very least, most users have "a" model of how to use
CC licenses.

CC can talk about a "spectrum of rights", but the truth is
that when you paint the picture in broad strokes, you end
up with a bunch of artists/authors who are trying to sell
their work while engaging in varying levels of
"community service".

Lots of companies are competitive in the market and
donate time, money, people, and equipment for noble causes.
But they are still in a market economy.

An artist/author who contributes some rights to a gift economy
but witholds enough rights to demand payment for certain uses
is operating in market economy doing some amount of
community service.

Contrast this with a barn-raising like linux or wikipedia
where an author/artist creates a work and completely gives
it away so that author and public are equal shareholders
in the work. The author gives away the source code and
enough rights to the work that someone else can improve
it and even sell it themselves.

Linux is a gift economy
RedHat is a market economy doing community service

If CC-NC-SA is the most common license, I think it is
fair to say that most CC authors/artists are creating
their own personal RedHat-like business, with a
spectrum of community service.

Which is different than someone giving their work away
and starting a Linux-like gift economy project.