Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

David Christie said:
> I've been lurking on this list for a while and reading the archives. This is
> my first post. I'm primarily interested in innovative open-source software
> licenses.
>
> Has anyone here been involved in discussions of an alternative to the CC
> Non-commercial license, analogous to the way Share-alike is an alternative
> to No-derivatives?

What you're proposing sounds like a sort of
compulsory license, except that it's voluntary,

Compulsory licenses allows downstream musicians
to record and distribute/sell a "cover" of someone
else's song, whether that person wants to allow it or not.
Pay a certain amount and you get compulsory permission
to make the cover tune.

This would widen the rights that can be purchased
up front to any commercial use, any derivative.

But since it always sends a percentage back to the
first author, the number of downstream generations
will likely be limited to one. if you open it up to
anyone who contributes, the finite resource of the
commercial revenue becomes a commons, and tragedy
soon ensues as hangers on and others want to derive
your work simply to ride the gravy train. which means
the only people you'll want to contribute to your
work are poeple who pay you, meaning the only people
you need to interact with are the people pay you,
meaning people who don't pay you are people you'll
want to restrict with CC-BY-NC-ND so they don't try
to move into your intellectual common.

But once you distribute your work CC-BY-NC-ND,
if there is someone who wants to use your work
commercially, they'll contact you and you're done.
If you want to work it out ahead of time,
you could put your rates on the same website that
your URL attribution points to. You could even
put a contract on your website that people sign
and cut themselves a commercial license for a
certain percentage of whatever revenues they make.

which means, as far as I can tell, creating the
compulsory license up front gains you nothing,
except perhaps it embeds the contract in the
license.

CC-BY-NC-ND + contract provision for royalties
is all you need, and I don't think you need a
new license to do that.

Obviously, at some point the people using your
work commercially will need to contact you
so they can figure out where to send the check.
When they contact you via your URL attribution,
that's where you can put your royalty numbers,
with an auto-contract. it then allows you to
record who actually wanted to use your work
comemrcially, so you can keep a lookout for
them using your work and the forthcoming royalty
check.

that's my opinion anyway.
I don't speak for Creative COmmons.
I am not a lawyer
This is not legal advice.

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