Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Thursday 03 February 2005 02:56 pm, Greg London wrote:
> drew Roberts said:
> > Do you not understand my point?
> >
> > Copyright is the creation of the state and is backed up and enforced by
> > the power of the state. Right?
>
> If copyleft is a subset of copyright, then copyleft is also
> a creation of the state, and this is useless, since both are
> created by the state, or a subset of what is created by the
> state.
>
> You have to focus on the behaviour of the actors involved.
>
> Copyright is a benefit granted to the first person to
> write or invent a work. Copyright is for the immediate
> benefit of the individual and for the delayed benefit
> of the community/public. The first individual to write
> or invent a work gets exclusive rights to that work,
> and the community cannot treat that work as public domain.
>
> The individual gets an immediate benefit.
> The community gets an limited benefit initially,
> having to pay for the work if the author chooses
> to hold it All Rights Reserved.
>
> The complete benefit to the community is
> delayed until the work enters the public domain.
>
>
>
> Copyleft is used by contributers to place a work
> in the community immediately. Rights to the work
> are licensed to the community so that any individual
> can do what they want with the work, except distribute
> a proprietary version of teh work.
>
> The community gets immediate benefit of a work
> placed under copyleft.
>
> Individuals cannot get the complete benefit of the
> work until teh work enters the public domain.
>
> Individuals cannot create derived proprietary forks
> until the work enters the public domain.
>
>
>
> Under copyright, the state/community surrenders the right
> to treat a new work as public domain and gives exclusive
> rights for a while to the individual who created it.
>
> Under copyleft, the individual licenses the rights to
> the work so that the community can treat the work as
> community property immediately.
>
>
> Copyright is a promise made by the state to individuals.
> Copyleft is a promise made by an individual to the community.
>
>
>
> Freedom of speech is a promise made by the states to its citizens.
> "Congress shall not abridge freedom of speech"
>
> Copyleft is a loyalty oath by an individual to a community.
> "I give my code to the community for any use as long as it
> remains in the community"
>
>
>
> Copyleft is not about "rights" the way "freedom of speech" is a right.
> Copyleft is about building a community, allowign people to contribute
> to that community, and protecting the works inside the community.
>
> Copyleft at its heart is about preventing an individual from taking
> community works and using those works to compete against the community.
>
> It's a great system, but isn't about individual rights first,
> community demands second. The copyleft community demands that
> individuals keep copyleft works within the community.
>
> Freedom of speech is about an individual being able to do something
> even if everyone else in the community would like to prevent him
> from doing so.
>
>
>
> It's the wrong metaphor.
>
You know, I said I have been working with a large lack of sleep and might be 
a 
bit slow. Today, I realised I might have been slow with relation to one of 
our prior exchanges where you said copyleft is the state and I came back with 
copyright is the state.

I think I figured out today that you might have been placing copyleft into 
the 
metophor you are talking about. Is that what it was?

Now, as to the metaphor. Could you please address something I pointed out in 
an earlier post which is I don't think it is meant to be a metaphor at lla 
but rather a clue to help people see that the word free in free software is 
not referring to the cost of that software so that, in fact, the only way to 
get some free software may be to but it.

On the possibility that I may be correct and "Free as in speech, not as in 
beer" may be intended as a clue and not as a metaphor, can you suggest 
anotehr simple saying to give people the right idea, if this one causes 
trouble.

"Free as in libre, not as in gratis?" Will people who don't know, take the 
time to look up what is meant? Something else? "Free as in market, not as in 
beer?"

As a point of clarification, are you more concerned that "Free as in speech" 
is a poor metaphor, or that you see say the GPL as a less free license than 
The BSD license?

all the best,

drew