Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 6 Mar 2005, at 04:12, Greg London wrote:

> Alright, so if someone really thinks they'll
> have a huge fan-culture following and create a
> non-commercial community around it, then maybe
> CC could give "ShareAlike" a different name
> when it is combined with anything else.

Fan culture is one example. I've seen calls for NC (-like) licenses for 
folk music, and I can't see anticapitalists going for non-NC, on 
principle.

We cannot predict how people will want to use licenses, but NC is a 
common theme. For Free Software it's disastrous. For Free Culture, I 
don't like it but many people seem to. Maybe this will be a difficult 
learning experience.

CC should not prescribe. But others can educate.

> I'd be fine with something like "CC-NC-FAN".
> Or "FC" for Fan Club, or whatever.
> At least it would be an honest description.

The licenses are modular. SA just means the other terms of the license 
must be re-applied to derived works. I don't think this is any kind of 
misrepresentation.

> The thing is that ShareAlike combined with any
> otehr license means that the original author
> isn't really "sharing" and the author and community
> aren't treated "alike". The community is really
> treated more like a fan club than as equals.

I appreciate that the original author could re-license. This is the 
achilles heel of NC-SA for a true community license.

> If a different name like "FC" were used, I think
> CC might see their "pie chart" of licenses
> shift because people would better understand
> what the license they're picking actually does,
> and change some of their choices.

A fan license would be good as, like the Sampling license, it could fit 
the target community's "social contract" better. But this is not the 
only morally or ideologically understandable use of NC-SA (however 
misguided).

- Rob.