Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Wednesday 09 March 2005 05:43 am, Branko Collin wrote:
> On 8 Mar 2005, at 18:44, Todd A. Jacobs wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 01:42:02PM -0500, Greg London wrote:
> > > 4.b says you may not exercise the rights granted in 3.b (create a
> > > derivative work) if it intended for commercial use.
> >
> > It says "primarily intended." Note that it does not preclude
> > commercial use per se, it simply says you can't excercise the rights
> > with a primary intent of using it that way. *shrug*
> >
> > If I use a BY-NC work, release the derivative as BY (without "intent"
> > to make money), then I'm technically free to do so. Then what might
> > happen? Someone downstream to my license might legitimately
> > commercialize something (with intent to make money), and still be in
> > compliance with the license that they have.
> >
> > This isn't meant to rekindle the (very lame) debate about liability
> > for that sort of thing. Rather, the whole point here is that, without
> > the requirement to release downstream works under a similar license,
> > all sorts of weirdness ensues.
>
> I have done a very weird thing (for me) and actually read the license
> concerned (see <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
> nc/2.0/legalcode>). Now I may not have understood a single word of it
> (IANAL), but I have a hard time finding anything that suggests
> derivative works are not bound by this license. Could you point out
> the part of the license that somehow frees derivatives of the
> license?
I think the confusion is arising because if you choose SA then it says the 
derivatives must carry exactly the same license, which implies that if you 
don't choose SA then the derivatives do not have to come with exactly the 
same license, so then exactly which alternative licenses are allowable? For 
instance, what about a non CC license altogether that still forbids 
commercial use?

all the best,

drew

That re-licensing matrix is looking more useful all the time.