Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Wyl Newland <wylnewland AT gmail.com>]

Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts
<cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
On 4/21/05, Greg London <email AT greglondon.com> wrote:
> So, if 10 people daisy chain modification upon modification
> and the end result is some really kick-ass work,
> you reserve the right to sell that work commercially
> and possibly avoid having to get permission of the downstream authors
> and avoiding having to pay them royalties?

Exactly right (I think).  The problem being solved is one of money
flow--my desire to keep money flowing away from self, towards service
and towards the honor system.  I can always put myself in the optional
beneficiary list in case somebody wants to send me a token $10 or
$10M.  Maybe the rule is that each person may append themself to the
beneficiary list, or not, as they wish.  In no case can anyone erase
the beneficiary list received from upstream, unless they decide to
fork a producer higher up in the chain.

You raise a good question in my mind.  If I write a screen-play and
<some-producer> makes the corresponding movie, he could easily decide
to rewrite my work and break the royalty flow.  I believe that a
copyleft license cannot break the rewrite permission, excepting in a
clear case of plagarism.  That's an example of where honor comes in. 
My upstream work is dated in terms of origination and always available
to activists wishing to make <some-producer> greed transparent.

Therefore, anybody annoyed by some particular turn of the beneficiary
list need merely fork the lowest acceptable beneficiary list and
rewrite around the offending downstream list.