Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Ricardo Gladwell said:
> Greg London wrote:
>> I can see how "technological measures" would disallow stuff
>> like DRM and encryption (and may a patent?), but I don't
>> think it is a file format qualifies as
>> "a technological measures that control access or use of the Work"
>> just because no other program can read it.
>>
>> Pete isn't preventing anyone from reading the file.
>> It isn't DRM.  It's just that no one cared about Pete's program
>> enough to add Pete's format to their own software.
>>
>> To put it another way: Obscurity is not a "control measure".
>>
>> You can't penalize someone and prohibit the use of a file format
>> simply because it isn't popular.
>
> This is the reason that I sincererly believe that a Transparency clause
> is important, for particularly when the above situation arises which is,
> as you indicate, not covered by the technology clause in all situations.

I would not support that idea. I think it makes sense for some projects,
but I think it is overkill for others. For a license that is specific to
software, it makes sense because the only way for software to be useful
is if you can compile and/or modify it.

For something like Creative Commons, where teh licenses can cover pretty
much ANYTHING taht can be copyrighted, it doesn't make sense to me to
require user-editable source in an "acceptable" format, because "editable"
and "acceptable" would be a lot of headaches from a legal standpoint,
and it could easily prohibit legitimate uses simply because someone
doesn't think the format is easy enough to edit or an "accepted" format.

If Poser is the only way to get CGI models of human facial expressions,
then excluding someone from doing something with your CC-SA work in Poser
because Poser costs a lot of money isn't the answer.

The point of copyleft protections is to protect the gift economy
you are trying to create from being swallowed by proprietary
competition and to allow all other uses of a work.

Copyleft prevents Microsoft from taking Linux, modifying to their
proprietary code, and selling their proprietary version in direct
competition with Linux. Copyleft prevents Proprietary-Pete from
using ShareAlike-Sam's work to put Sam out of business.

The point is not to prevent the work from being >used< for
any and all proprietary purposes.

I don't see how allowing someone to use your work in Poser
will harm the gift economy you are trying to establish.