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cc-licenses - Re: Intended Meaning of "Non-Commercial"

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "J.B. Nicholson-Owens" <jbn AT forestfield.org>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Intended Meaning of "Non-Commercial"
  • Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 23:25:45 -0500

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.




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