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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Gottfried Hofmann <toddd AT mypse.goracer.de>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Can't find the right license
  • Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 04:54:35 +0200



Evan Prodromou wrote:
On Thu, 2004-28-10 at 15:41 -0400, Greg London wrote:


I think attribution should be viewed by its original name of "advertising
clause". If you're using CC-BY for something, it should be for free
advertising, not for any sort of gift-economy type project.



That's a complete and utter crock. The Attribution license element was
never called the "advertising clause". People have compared it to the
so-called "obnoxious BSD advertising clause", although it has nothing
whatsoever to do with that clause. I'm getting really sick of hearing
otherwise intelligent people equate the two, since they have nothing
even remotely in common.

Oh, they have very much in common...


Here is the BSD advertising clause:

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
software must display the following acknowledgement:
This product includes software developed by the University of
California, Berkeley and its contributors.

Here is the Attribution license element:

If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or
Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for
the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the
medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or
pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the
title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably
practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that
Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such
URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing
information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work,
a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work
(e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or
"Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such
credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided,
however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective
Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other
comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as
prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.

Anyone with a lick of sense can see the difference. If you need some
hints, try this:

1. The first one has to do with advertising, separate from the
distribution of the work.
2. The second one doesn't.


Anyone with a lick of sense can see the similiarities. If you need some hints, try this:

1. The first one is about giving credit if you advertise.

2. The second one is about giving credit if you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the work.

Well, the attribution clause is even more obnoxious than the advertising clause.



Attribution has much more in common with "keep copyright notices intact"
phrasing in licenses than the advertising clause. A more apt comparison
would be with clauses 1 and 2a of the GNU General Public License.

If it had, then you could delete the following lines:

"...and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit."

Well, there must be something in these lines that makes a difference ;-)

Btw: having only a "keep copyright notices intact" clause would be quiet OK for game development.

> I'd be interested to hear why you think that Attribution is a jackboot
> on the neck of Freedom.

It's very laborious and lavish to meet all the excessive attribution requirements. Debian legal calls this an "unreasonable restriction on distribution and making modified versions."
(I'm talking from the gamedev's point of view).



-Toddd









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