Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

"Should a CC license require a modifiable copy?"

No. The problem is that you're asking the wrong question.
The question is:

"Should a CC license require all human created pieces of teh work?"

If the artist created the work as an oil painting,
that is the human created work.

In that case, no, the artist shouldn't have to include the human
created work. He could, however, photograph it, license that,
and include the photograph with the licese.

But to demand the artist use a particular format, i.e. photoshop,
in CREATING the work has two problems, (1) it puts a restriction
on the artist to the point that they may not be able to create
the same work. Someone just might be better at creating music with
a real drum set, and forcing them to create it on a computer and
distribute it in MIDI format so that people can modify individual
notes is killing the artist so that lazy people can use the work
downstream.

The other problem (2), is that the OSD says something to the effect
that a license that attaches itself to some particular medium
(5.25 floppy, for example) will not get OSI certified.

The point is to allow artists to create their works in whatever
method works best for them. For computer programs, it makes sense
to zero in on source code in a text format because that's pretty
much the only way you can compile anything. But for Creative Commons,
you might have a guy whose good with bongo drums, and to say that
he can't record a clip of him playing drums and license it CC because
it isn't an easily modifiable copy is sorta missing the point.

After it the work is created, you can ask whether or not a license
should require all the human created versions of teh work.

In the case of the oil painting, the painting would be excluded,
but whatever image file created from the oil painting might be.




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