Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

drew Roberts said:
> In the book "The Forest" I seem to remember that not everyone had rights to
> the commons.

That is probably true of any physical commons.
It would quickly have to have some sort of restrictions
or individual benefit would create an incentive to overgraze.


>> 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.

Copyright law is commons management.
GPL is a subset of copyright law.
So, you could probably argue that any
such subset also acts as a sort of
'managed commons'.

Patent law is a commons management system as well.

both provide incentive to individuals for part time ownership
of any new territory they discover in the commons land.
After a time, the ownership goes back to the commons.

The commons grows over time with new discoveries.