Development of Creative Commons licenses

["J.B. Nicholson-Owens" <jbn AT forestfield.org>]

drew Roberts wrote:
> There is a furniture business in the family. They have a department that sells 
> home entertainment, pro audio, and musical instruments. My idea, and I don't 
> know if they will bite, it so provide a PC with a burner in the store loaded 
> with music that the public could access and burn CDs for themselves. They 
> could bring their own CDs or the store could sell them some. (Currently the 
> store does not sell blank media.

I think that CC NC licensors will look at this as a way for the store to get 
people in and get them to buy some furniture or electronic goods; in other 
words, the NC work is being used for commercial gain.

> My thought is there would be no charge for the use of the machine and any 
> member of the public could come in and avail themselves of this. They would 
> not have to be paying customers and there would be no ties or obligations.

Perhaps the store could host the computer in a local public library or some 
other clearly public place?

As for blank media, I recommend continuing to not sell it at all.  Either 
don't provide blank media or offer it free of charge.  Again, do what you can 
to draw a clear separation between what you're doing and any commercial 
involvement between you and the users.  The focus here is not on making a 
profit, one of the major misunderstandings about the NC licenses judging from 
the discussions on this list, it's on "commercial advantage or private 
monetary compensation" which reads sufficiently broadly to include even being 
merely recompensed for the money spent on blank media.

> If this would not cross the line, are there any gotchas that we would need to 
> be careful of? That is, things vwery similar that would cross the line?

Sponsorship notification: "This computer brought to you by Roberts Furniture 
World--really low prices and stuff you'll like!".  Such language reads like an 
ad and suggests that the copying station is really there to draw users into 
the store.