Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

drew Roberts said:
> On Saturday 05 March 2005 09:47 am, Greg London wrote:
>> No one has incentive to invest any large amount of effort into a
>> CC-NC-SA work because the original author can always trump their
>> community-based-improvements with a commercially-paid version.
>
> Greg, if the community's version is better than what the original author can
> come up with, wouldn't this tend to diminish the commercial value of what he
> has?

One myth of the world-wide-web is that all you need to get from
you to your customers is a website for your content and good
search words to get towards the top of google.

I self-published my sci-fi book about a year ago through a
POD company called Lulu. It is now available via amazon,
or you can walk into a brick and mortar store and order it
at the customer service desk. Access is there. But it hasn't
been doing so well for sales.

Then I spent some money and ordered some copies of my book in
bulk and sold them out of the trunk of my car and a backpack
I'd carry around. "Hey, you want to buy a book?" Conversation
ensues. Sale follows.

Sales. Advertising. This stuff actually works. I've sold far
more books in person than have sold because someone found
my book on amazon and decided to order it out of teh blue.

And Sales costs money. Which means that the NonCommercial
community version could be a whole lot better than the
author's version, but the author has the advantage that they
can spend money on advertising and sales.

How do you think the community would feel if it put a lot
of time/effort into creating an awesome derivative work,
only to have the author take the audience away because they
can spend money on sales and advertising?

The main reason people CONTRIBUTE to a COMMUNITY project
is because of the size of teh community. If people wanted
to write and didn't care if no one else read it, they
wouldn't need a website, they could just print it out
and put it in a file cabinet.

Retaining the commercial rights means you retain the right
to capture the lion's share of teh audience through commercial
sales.


> Personally, I like BY-SA and would like the 2.x version of SA as an option.

I don't mind BY-SA, though I think there really ought to be a way
to turn attribution off.

I dont mind SA.
I dont mind NC.

But I think the combination NC-SA is a reflection of a lack
of understanding of how the licenses work.

> I can imagine circumstances where NC has a place for other than economic
> reasons. What about the option for a binding pledge on the part of the
> original author to not excercise his right to the commercial option when
> releasing BY-NC-SA?

If they aren't going to exercise their commercial option then they
should release the the commercial rights, licensing it CC-SA.

What would be the point of creating a work so that NO ONE
could exercise it commercially?

If the author wants to sell it, fine.
But if they don't, what is the point of
making it so that no one can?
Why not allow the power of commercial
sales and advertising put the work out
into the world?

Yes, copyright gives all these rights to authors.
And the authors can give up whatever rights they wish,
or they can keep them all.

But some combinations are more a reflection of an
author not making a hard choice about what they want to do,
and all their repurcussions.

If you reserve the commercial rights to your work,
you reserve the right to capture the audience from
any community based work.

Putting "ShareAlike" on top of NonCommercial
simply means that you demand that the fans
play nicely together and share their versions
of your work, but you still reserve the right
to recapture any audience that they create.

And I don't like someone using "ShareAlike"
when the other license options in their alphabet soup
result in license that neither >Shares< nor treats
authors and readers >Alike<. It's like advertising
for "Free Kitchen Utensil" on TV but then requiring
$20 shipping and handling for a 2 dollar trinket.

You are not sharing-alike if you keep the commercial
rights to yourself. It's fine if you keep the commercial
rights, I don't mind that part, but tacking "ShareAlike"
just makes it feel like "Free Kitchen Utensil" for $20
shipping.

I license a some excerpts from my book and some other
stuff as CC-BY-NC. But I'm not going to kid myself
or my audience by telling them it's "ShareAlike" too.

But wait, there's more.
if you order by midnight tonight,
you'll get this free steak-knife set.
Call now. operators standing by.

I assume most people are doing it because they simply
don't understand all the license variations and how
they work, and how they affect each other when they
combine.

Which is why I think CC really ought to make an effort
to educate the people who select licenses so that
"CreativeCommons" doesn't start getting equated with "Ronko"
and "ShareAlike" doesn't start sounding like "Free Utensil".