Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gottfried Hofmann <toddd AT mypse.goracer.de>]

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