Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>]

On 25 Nov 2004, at 15:12, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:

> "You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
> publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures
> that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with
> the terms of this License Agreement."
> 
> I'm interested in what types of "technological measures" this covers.
> For example, would it be illegal to distribute the work in a
> proprietary format that would, for example, require expensive software
> to edit? Does the CCPL itself in anyway require a modifiable version
> be made available, similar to the source code clause in the GPL?

IANAL, and do not work for CC. 

I have seen judges rule that something was an effective hinderance, 
even if it was not intended as such (cases about sexism and ageism), 
but also the opposite (SCOTUS recently on perpetual copyright). So 
how something would turn out in court is a different matter.

The paragraph you quote seems to be about DRM. I don't think it 
refers to, say, the MS Word file format. Letting your users work with 
familiar software undoubtedly also enables them to create more CC-
licensed works. (In other words, you may raise the threshold for 
readers a bit, but lower it for writers.)

Perhaps you could suggest to your users the use of software that 
creates works in well documented, open-standards-following file 
formats. At least that could help create a mindset in which the 
authors actively try and reach their audience.

-- 
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl