Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Thursday, October 21, 2004, at 09:52PM, Greg London <email AT greglondon.com> 
wrote:

>Our difference in opinion hinges at the point where the
>METAPHOR for a commons pasture or commons ocean FAILS
>to follow a "commons" of intellectual works.

OK.

>A physical commons (pasture, ocean, etc) is a zero sum game.
>Every barbwire fence and every drift net must take something
>from teh community to give something to the proprietary individual.

Not immediately. The community will immediately get more wool or fish from 
the producer who invests in the wire or the net. There may well be an 
immediate benefit to society. But over time the capability to create new or 
future wealth will suffer.

>This is simply not the case with copyright works.

IMHO it is exactly the case with copyrighted works *if* one looks downstream 
from the immediate benefit.

>A public domain piece of software can have an infinite number
>of proprietary forks created, and none of those forks prevents
>a public-domain-friendly group of individuals from adding
>that same functionality to the public domain software and
>re-dedicating it to the public domain.

I'm just going to quickly nip out and add the bits of Disney's "Aladdin" that 
aren't in the (modern) 1001 Nights to an equivalent public domain work. Wish 
me luck. ;-)

>It IS the case with Patentable works. If you take some Public
>Domain software and add some patented LZW compression function
>to it, then no one can add that same functionality and make
>it public domain.
>
>PATENTS treat functionality as a zero-sum-game.
>COPYRIGHT does not.

Historically I would agree, but the current IP ideology is doing its darndest 
to make it zero sum.

>It is true that a copyright fork does not return anything
>to the public domain. But neither does it take anything away
>from it either.

Not at the point of forking. But let's look at the Public Domain as an 
iterative or cyclical system, one that benefits both society in general and 
"proprietary" interests as well with time. A proprietary fork may well 
provide immediate benefit. But it will deny future benefit for some time, 
slowing the creation of value that it itself benefitted from. This is not all 
achieved just using Copyright, but the current IP ideology isn't limited to 
Copyright and Patents.

>A copyright fork does not TAKE ANYTHING AWAY from the public.
>It creates something new that isn't public domain.
>
>There is a huge difference between the two, and it is
>the source of the fundamental difference in our opinions.

IMHO this fails to treat PD as a process and does not account for denying 
resources rather than removing resources. And in fact, IP ideology is based 
on the idea that a PD fork (as it were) *does* take something away!

>If someone has an "atomic" project, like a bunch of photographs
>of a city, and they want to make them Public Domain, why not?

They are presumably doing so to provide some small benefit. If, however, 
doing so supports the denial of larger benefit, their action works against 
itself.

>If wikitravel comes along and puts them into their project,
>the project should be Copyleft/ShareAlike.
>
>But how is wikitravel harmed if AAA uses the picture
>in their own travel brochure?

Cross-stream, atomically they are not. Downstream, they are. And if 
wikitravel wish to crop, filter or montage the images, they'd better hope 
they don't do so too similarly to a previous AAA version.

>You seem to want to monopolize any and all gift-economies
>so that only other gift-economies can use them.

I want to stop value being syphoned off from a feedback loop whose growth 
benefits both those inside and outside the loop.

>I used a public domain of teh moon off of a NASA website
>for the cover of my sci-fi book. The book is "All Rights Reserved".
>Did anyone "lose" something because I didn't "give something back"?

Yes. They lost a sci-fi book. ;-)

Could you have afforded to pay a professional illustrator for an original 
illustratuion for the cover? In fact, could you have afforded to commission 
the image you have used? You have added value to something from the Public 
Domain. If that image had not been placed in the Public Domain, your product 
would not have had that value.

Would a 19th century image of the moon done as well? Kinda a different feel. 
Culture *is* subject to bitrot. By the time your work is out of Copyright it 
will be the same vintage as Jules Verne's work is for us now. Now if you make 
your work PD, the same will be true of any derivatives. At some point in the 
tree of PD forks, the branches stop being PD. 

I am not talking about fairness or Left/Right ideology, I am talking about 
growing *total* value at the fastest possible rate.

>The original photos fo the moon are still public domain.
>
>My point being that proprietary copyright forks are not
>a zero-sum-game. My proprietary fork of the public-domain
>image of the moon did not take anything away from anyone.

Upstream and cross-stream, no. A fence doesn't reduce last year's harvest or 
anyone else's current flocks either.

>It added something that is proprietary, but it did not
>take anything away from the public domain.

As phrased here, failing time travel nothing could. ;-)

- Rob.