Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Thursday 24 March 2005 03:03 pm, Greg London wrote:
> Peter Knupfer, H-Net said:
> > Context matters, and context is the essence of moral rights.  It gives
> > meaning to otherwise isolated information and affects the reputation
> > and, sometimes, credentials, of a work's creator.
>
> the examples below show no situation where "reputation" was threatened.
>
> > Nor is this about the
> > extent to which moral rights "saves the day."  Moral rights, like fair
> > use, is a euphemism for a set of attitudes about how one's ideas are
> > germinated and used,
>
> Maybe I'm too much of an american, but "Fair Use" is not an attitude.
> Fair Use encompasses a set of rights that remain public rather than
> being granted exclusively to the author with all the other rights
> to the work.
>
> The right to record a TV program on a VCR being a major Fair Use right.

The problem I haave with Fair Use rights is that they are not codified and so 
I, as a member of the public, cannot afford to make full use of my fair use 
rights as, the more fully I seek to use them, the closer I get to a line that 
HAS NOT YET BEEN DRAWN in the sand. And so, I can find myself in court where 
the line will be drawn and we will see if I have crossed it or not.

So, since I do not want to end up in court, I stay far away from the line and 
thus cannot take advantage of the rights I do have.
>
> > and if people believe that such rights are not
> > available to them, they will be disinclined to share.
>
> they may be disinclined to share, but others might not.
> We do not have "Moral Rights" the way I understand Europe
> does, and we've managed to find authors willing to
> publish and share works.
>
> > My problem in these examples, is not that the refusal of permission is
> > justified -- Holocaust deniers will never listen to anybody, but the
> > audience needs to see their views rebutted.  But Jeffersonian
> > rationalism is but a theory when stacked up against human nature.  My
> > problem is that the CC license could have a chilling effect on the
> > willingness to publish and share in the first place, and that important
> > works will not be available to the audiences that might benefit most
> > from them.
>
> open source allows code forks.
> some people argue that it's a bad thing because
> you could have a community split rather than
> work together on the same piece of code.
> Linux has KDE and Gnome as graphical interfaces
> as the result of a permanent fork.
>
> But the only way to prevent forking is to maintain
> some sort of control over the work. And if you
> maintain control, then others are disincentivized
> to make modifications/improvements because they
> then have to get it approved.

Disincentivized big time!
>
> I hear your arguments about "human nature",
> and I get there's a difference between
> open source software and a work about the
> holocaust. However, I'm more of the opinion
> that while the context may be different,
> the human nature at the root is similar.
>
> Controlling open source would kill open source.
> It defeats the purpose of enabling a community.
> And even with this supposed lack of central control,
> Linux survives against a multi-billion dollar
> competitor by the name of Microsoft.
>
> Microsoft is the racist to Linux's holocaust story.
>
> And yet despite Microsoft's commercial advantage
> and billions of dollars at its disposal for spreading
> fear uncertainty and doubt, Linux still survives,
> thrives even. All this without Moral Rights to
> protect it.
>
> I guess what I'm getting at is that you'll never
> eliminate all the morons/racists/etc in the world.
> Someone somewhere will swear up and down that
> the American moon program was a hoax and they'll
> use Public Domain NASA photos to attempt to disprove
> it.

My grandmother was very vocal in her belief that the moon program was a hoax. 
Capricorn One did not help the situation. To anyone's knowledge, has a hoax 
of that magnitude ever been foisted on the world? On the modern world?
>
> Moral rights won't make the morons go away,
> it'll just slow them down a day while they
> google for new material.
>
> And while you argue that Moral Rights will be
> an incentive for people to contribute,
> the open source approach to things would seem
> to say that it also might DIS-incentivize people
> from actually doing anything with the work.
>
> Linux would be nothing if no one was willing
> to touch Linus Torvald's kernel software.
>
> So then moral rights becomes a trade off.
> incentive for the author becomes
> a disincentive for a community project.

This is my take exactly and (at least for the copyleft style licenses I 
prefer) the whole reason for putting my work under CC BY-SA is to provide 
incentives for the community. (I do this partly as thanks for what has 
already been done for me and partly because I expect the community to provide 
many magnified benefits to me in the future.)

all the best,

drew