Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam AT codegnome.org>]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 04:16:39PM -0800, Glenn Otis Brown wrote:

> once again, for the 10,000th time on this list, the attribution
> requirement is much less "severe" than some of you are imaginging.

I think the problem is that the nuances of the actual legal license are
a bit subtle for most casual users of the license, and the deed (which
is, for good or ill, what most people really look at) doesn't indicate
any exceptions except the author's express release. To wit:

    Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
    - For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the
      license terms of this work.
    - Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from
      the copyright holder.

So, if you are right about the nuances in the legalese being sufficient,
perhaps the real issue is just that the deed has oversimplified matters
to the point where it's non-obvious. :)

While I myself see no personal value in a non-BY license (why not make
it PD, then?), I think enough people have raised the issue that CC needs
to look at how the deed can better communicate to the content producers
how they can disclaim attribution.

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