Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Say I give the book to a student for free, and charge for the teaching 
> services. Is that allowed?

It would be hard to convince people that you weren't charging for the book.

You would be better off telling the student where to get the book online (for 
free download) and having them print a copy themselves (a commercial 
transaction between them and the copy shop) then report to your class book in 
hand.

> Say I make shoes. Someone takes a picture of one of my shoes and publishes 
> it under the BY-NC. I grab that picture and put it on a flyer advertising 
> my shoes. I give out the flyer for free.
>
> Does that break the license?

Yes.  Advertising for a commercial business is clearly using the NC licensed 
work for commercial gain.  You are trying to get people to come to your store 
where they will have an opportunity to buy a pair of the pictured shoes.

You would be better off making your own picture of the shoes and using that 
picture in the ad.

> Well, /that/ is not the situation I'm concerned about. I am happy to 
> consider "non-commercial" to mean $0 for /selling/ copies, or making 
> copies. What I'm concerned about is alternate ways to make money off the 
> product that don't involve charging for copies.

And that will be interpreted by an NC-licensor as purposefully interpreting 
the language too narrowly as to avoid the limitations of what the clause is 
there to prevent.

If I understand the NC language correctly, one of the misunderstandings 
pervading this thread is the confusion between what the NC licenses say and 
reframing the debate to focus on making a profit (a proper subset of 
commercial activity).  The subject is not whether one makes a profit (thus, it 
is not relevant to ask how much the advertised object sells for and how much 
it cost to produce).  The subject ultimately focuses on a copyright holder's 
desire to get a percentage of any money that trades hands when copies of the 
work are shared.

Perhaps I don't really understand what CC is saying in the NC language, and if 
that is the case, I'd happily stand corrected.