Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 09:47:05AM -0500, Greg London wrote:

> "more free" by making it CC-PD or something. The work and all
> derivatives will always be at least as restrictive as CC-NC.

Sure, but without SA, someone downstream can also add NoDerivatives, or
even make the derivatives public domain. I'm not saying these are bad
things; I'm just saying that allowing such derivative licenses may not
suit the original creators.

The whole idea of a commons, as well as the unbastardized concept of
copyright itself, it to balance the needs and desires of authors with
the public good. It isn't to trump the individual in the name of the
greater good, and I think that needs to be kept firmly in mind.

If your issue is with NC, you're entitled to your view, but I think that
a non-commercial commons definitely adds to the greater good. People
don't have to use NC, but using it doesn't obviate the benefits of
releasing a work into the commons. 

If your issue is with SA, then I think you're missing the point: the GPL
has been such a huge success because of its viral nature--it prevents
individuals or corporate interests from hijacking a work and making it
inaccessible to those downstream. SA addresses that by saying that, if
you take advantage of a work that's been released into the commons, you
shouldn't be able to prevent others from doing the same.

There's nothing stopping you from released something BY-ND and BY-NC-SA
at the same time. That would allow the downstream user to *either* make
commercial use of an original or to make non-commercial derivatives.
Maybe that would better suit your needs.

> CC-NC-SA not only doesn't keep all the derviatives equal, it witholds
> the commercial rights to the work upfront, which then can be used by

ALL licenses essentially do this, because the content creator always has
the option to relicense their work on a commercial basis. If you release
something under the GPL or BSD licenses, there's nothing to stop you
from also selling the code under a commercial license at some later
date. You can't relicense the derivatives, but the original still
belongs to the copyright owner.

There was a recent flame war on another list about open source, and
about what content creators owe "the community." The truth is, content
creators don't owe anyone anything; they choose to release things that
they hope others may find useful under whatever terms and conditions
they release it under. If people do, great; if not, people are free to
ignore it or create alternatives.

The intent of the commons is to create an incentive for people to share
their works. CC provides a spectrum of rights, *all* of which are better
than exclusive copyright. 

Freedom means not allowing people to take away other's rights. It does
*not* mean giving up your own.

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