Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Tuesday 01 February 2005 04:43 pm, Greg London wrote:
> drew Roberts said:
> > Are you sure you have your terminology right? Are you speaking from a US
> > point of view, a british commonwealth pov, or some other pov?
> >
> > I read a book within the last few years by Edward Rutherfurd called The
> > Forest (he also wrote Sarum, London, and Russka which I had read before -
> > I liked them all) and it deals some with the laws of the commons for a
> > forest in England. IIRC, the ideas do not match with your thoughts. That
> > is why I ask.
>
> A commons, first, is a natural resource with no restrictions imposed on it.
> You then get "the tragedy of the commons" because individuals are
> incentivized to overfish overgraze, etc.

Here is where I am questioning your terminology.  Take a village commons as 
an 
example. There may be no restrictions placed on it WRT the villagers, but can 
those from another village make the same uses of it? From another country? I 
am asking for historical realities if anyone knows them?

In the book "The Forest" I seem to remember that not everyone had rights to 
the commons.
>
> the communities then may decide to impose restrictions on how
> the community may use the common resource, so that the
> resource isn't depleted, exhausted, killed to the point where
> recovery is impossible.

Accouring to your terms, doesn't it then cease to be a commons?
>
> Public Domain is an unrestricted commons.
> due to the non-zero-sum nature of intellectual works,
> you can't have overfishing of the intelectual commons.
>
> For intellectual works, a "regulated commons" could describe
> public domain and all rights reserved. It is regulated in that
> people can take from teh commons, create something new,
> and hold it as their own property for a while, before allowing
> the work to be treated as public domain again.
>
> The same way a regulated commons forest might allow
> someone to cut down some trees to use to build a house
> on their private property, copyright is a regulated commons,
> allowing someone to create something new, take it off of the
> public domain commons for a while, and treat it as private property.
>
> I'm not talking about regulated commons, though.
>
> When I'm talking about an intellectual commons,
> I mean unrestricted works or Public Domain works.

Fine I understand that this is what you mean.
>
> Copyright and Patent rights is one form of management.
> So is copyleft. So is creative commons spectrum of rights.
>
> But since managed commons basically covers teh whole spectrum,
> it becomes a useless term.

I don't think it is a useless term. Also note, with the GPL, you can take 
from 
the pool (at this point I think it can be considered a commons, where the 
community decides to put certain restrictions on it for the good of all, but 
I will not insist on that term without further thought and discussion) make 
modification and keep the total work private. You could do so, and consider 
it a trade secret. You would not be able to distribute your creation, but if 
it gave you an advantage of some sort, you are not required to put it back in 
the pool.
>
> So, by commons, I mean unrestricted or Public Domain

all the best,

drew