Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Friday, April 29, 2005, at 03:45PM, Greg London <email AT greglondon.com> 
wrote:

>CC hasn't clarified what exactly "commercial" means
>on the grounds that explaining their licenses
>is legal advice. 

LOL :-)

The FSF's GPL FAQ is invaluable in understanding and explaining the GPL. I'd 
have made bad mistakes at work on real projects without it. It is *vital* 
that CC have an equivalent. A comprehensive and clear licenses FAQ is *the* 
most important project for CC at the moment, otherwise understanding and 
adoption of the CC licenses will start to be undermined by FUD and 
unintentional misuse.

The primary FUD in the UK against CC is that CC doesn't explain the rights 
you are giving away when you use "the" CC license. A clear and thorough FAQ 
and examples will help nip this in the bud.

I think Evan's examples are an excellent resource and should be corrected (if 
needed) and extended to show SA, ND and BY examples as well.

I know this all costs money, but it will cost more to correct 
misunderstandings or defend against action resulting from those 
misunderstandings later. 

>Since the sliver of information
>from CC about CC-NC was that the NonCommercial
>license allows monetary exchange as long as it
>is not-for-profit, I would like to suggest a
>new license which would effectively be what
>everyone on this list THOUGHT CC-NonCommercial was.

Hence the "primarily" in the NC license, which I know has many people worried 
or unsure.

Does the amount charged, or the relationship of the revenue to the provision 
of the work, really count for less than the status of the entity doing the 
charging?

>Namely, I would like to propose some sort of
>license that would not allow any monetary exchange
>whether it be for profit or nonprofit.

How would this compare with the GPL's "reasonable fee" for media?
How would I pay for the bandwidth to fetch nme-licensed media?
These may just be questions of fine tuning, but a poorly tuned nme license 
could produce content that no host or network will touch with a bargepole.

>I would call it NoCompensation, but NC is already
>taken, so I suggest the name "NoMonetaryExchange",
>with the acronym CC-NME.

The New Musical Express might object. :-)

NoPayment (NP) ?
Mustn'tCharge (MC) ?
Can'tProfit (CP)?

- Rob.