Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 31 May 2005, at 15:36, Greg London wrote:

> Your argument seems to boil down to this:
> + Centralized attribution can be "abused" because the wiki-project
> + could put a URL to a page that advocates their political or
> + religious or university cause.

One of my arguments does, yes. :-)

> But as far as I can tell, CC-BY-SA has the same problem only
> WORSE because EVERYONE can put in a URL to their political cause.
>
> If one project has a thousand contributers who all have linkback
> bombs to various political causes, and another project has ONE
> linkback bomb to one political cause, then it seems that the
> worst-case abuse would be less for CC-Wiki than it could be
> for CC-BY-SA.

2.5 allows either additional or replacement attribution as far as I  
can make out. Additional attribution is roughly twice as bad as  
personal attribution for linkback exploits. Replacement attribution  
is WMIMWYIM for reputation, or removal of freedom of expression, and  
is impossible to enforce under any full-strength incorporation of  
Berne into national law.

> The thousand contributer project might decide that since there is
> so much attribution that it decides to bury it in some page that's
> off the beaten path. Put all those linkback bombs in a seldom-visited
> sub-page on the project website.
>
> And if that REALLY is the way wikis will handle attribution,
> then people need to wake up and DROP ATTRIBUTION. If attribution
> gets buried, then you might as well be up front about it and
> make cc-wiki have NO attribution requirement but retain the
> sharealike piece. It then makes sharealike incompatible with
> cc-wiki, but it's honest and it solves the attribution abuse
> problem by dropping it.

Certainly I think CC should bring back non-attribution as an option.

> What we're doing is comparing the worst-worst-cases and seeing
> which license is better. if everyone is an attribution devil
> then the best solution is to drop it entirely.

I do have my tinfoil hat on here. But for proposals affecting  
something as important as a license that covers millions of pieces of  
work we do have to consider the worst case scenarios.

> But if you compare the best-case scenarios, then people wont
> be abusing attribution, cc-wiki could have centralized attribution,
> and it would have the advantage of still being compatible with
> CC-BY-SA.
>
> I have said for years that attribution is a market-economy
> license and doesn't belong on gift economy licenses like ShareAlike.

A simple market/gift split doesn't capture the issues.

Attribution is a *reputation* economy license module. The reputation  
economy drives both the market and gift economies, and, yes, is a  
burden on both as well. The CC licenses capture this very well. There  
may be other dimensions that the CC licenses capture, like economies  
of objects (ND) versus economies of services (~ND).

But the important thing is the CC licenses give people the freedom to  
express how they wish their work to participate in culture, however  
misguided any of us may regard their individual wishes as being, and  
however any of us may model that participation.

> Creative Commons made the huge mistake of rolling it into
> be "on" by default for all licenses and making it impossible
> as far as anyone has been able to demonstrate to turn it "off".

I agree that not allowing people to choose non-attribution was a  
mistake, as it removed choice. But in practice, non-attribution for  
*cultural works* without a requirement of providing source may be  
problematic, and may reduce value.

> So, what I see are a couple of options:
>
> (1) all cc-3.0 gift economy licenses drop attribution completely.
>
> This would mean CC-SA-3.0 would be the same as CC-SA-1.0.
> It would also mean that CC-Wiki-3.0 would be CC-SA-3.0.

It would be wrong of CC to try to substitute a license with a  
different intent as part of an upgrade. That would be blatant  
paternalism, diktat. There might be the slightest hint of a backlash...

> This would require CC admit they screwed up 2.0 by including
> it in every friggen license they offer.

But how were they mistaken in doing this? The market spoke, CC listened.

> It would also make
> all CC-BY-SA-2.0 projects incompatible with CC-SA-3.0 projects.

This would be legally impossible, as CC-SA-3.0 lacks the BY module,  
making upgrade from CC-BY-SA-2.0 impossible under the terms of that  
license.

> But if we want to think about the longest-term benefit, this
> is probably it. Gift Economy projects such as wikis and such
> should NOT have attribution overhead.

But a simple market/gift split does not capture the full range of  
considerations. The overhead may be the price of the work from a  
reputation economy point of view.

> Wikipedia demonstrates
> that it is possible to be massively successful without attribution.

IMHO it does not. To add to what I've posted elsewhere, I do  
recognise that there are plenty of anonymous edits as well, and I am  
not claiming that a truly anonymous Wiki would be unsuccessful, just  
that I am not aware of one in practice, and that Wikipedia is not a  
complete example of a successful anonymous project.

> (2)
> CC-wiki-3.0 has centralized attribution.
>
> this would make wiki compatible with CC-by-SA projects.
> But would have possible problems with abuse.
>
> (3)
> CC-wiki-3.0 has no attribution
> CC-sa-3.0 has attribution.
>
> This would fix abuse problems for cc-wiki
> but would make it incompatible with cc-sa-by-2.0
>
> (4)
> drop the cc-wiki idea completely.
> have everyone use CC-BY-SA-2.0

(4) sounds good. :-)

> My preference would be for option 1.
> I think that if CC wants to focus on the
> best long-term benefit for gift economy
> projects, they would drop the attribution
> requirement.

Creative Commons are about giving people control of their rights.  
Amusingly given the rhetoric that often surrounds this, CC are about  
freedom of *contract*, not freedom of expression (apart from  
expression of rights). Removing that freedom would be bad.

Agitating for people to license their work a particular way must take  
place outside of the framework of CC itself.

> It would create some incompatibility problems
> with current projects that have attrbution
> turned on. But I think any new project would
> quickly realize the benefit of not using
> attribution.


The individuals who stand to make their reputation by running a given  
project may see benefits to not using attribution, but the  
individuals who stand to not gain any reputation by contributing to  
such a contract won't see any benefit. And if that discourages enough  
contributors, the project's owners won't see much benefit in practice  
either.

But then I don't know the wiki 'social contract'

- Rob.