Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Takemoto" <timtak AT nihonbunka.com>]

Dear Evan

I wrote
> >The fact that people still want books made of paper makes it difficult to
copyleft
> >and still make a profit.

Evan wrote (prophetically)
> That's just not true. A publisher can make a pretty tidy profit by
assembling copyleft
> books and selling them.

I agree with you. And this is exactly the point.

But I am talking about the *authors* of the books and not the publishers.

Let me put this in another way.

This is not only about distribution but a balance of power.

Once apon a time software companies were made up of programmers (authors)
and
software publishers (bug checkers, people who make the box, burn the cd, man
the
support phones, make adverts and those that manage the software programmers
and
pay everyones wages, because they have money). The software programmer, even
though (s)he was the prime mover of the company only got a small proportion
of
the proftit.

Then along came open source. The programmers became free of middle men by
the devious and radical technique of making their wares available for free
on the
Internet.
No one needed the box,
No one needed the CD
The bug checkers are the users
The people who provide support are the users
The advert is the program itself, its community and its website.
The managing middle men were largely cut out of the deal. The software
publishers
are crying. Many programmers are happy.

The programmers make their money by offering extras - extra services,
addons, and
often a "pro-version."

The system works. Instead of middle men (software publishers) there is
creator and
user cooperation.

So returning to your suggestion: Evan wrote
> That's just not true. A publisher can make a pretty tidy profit by
assembling copyleft
> books and selling them.

Very true. But that is NOT the same situation as that which is successful in
GPLed
software -- creators and users getting together to make each other happy.

Indeed if a publisher, such as Microsoft, could "assemble GPL software and
sell it" then
GPL software would not have taken off. But Microsoft cannot do that because
everyone
is happy to download it from the relevant site at sourceforge. If publishers
can make a profit
like that then it does not pay for authors to copyleft their works. The the
authors will be
left out the profit loop instead of the publisher.

You point out precisely the problem with copyleft books. I can put my work
online,
and then MacMillion can come along and publish it in a glossy cover, and
take over
the means of distribution with very little creative effort, just capital.

Open Source is kind of Marxist. It empowers non-capitalist workers
(programmers).

Capitalists hold capital. Capital is the means to production, and at the
same time
the work of workers made concrete, controlled, solidified.  Some capitalists
started
out as thrifty labourers themselves, but soon they worked out a way of just
controlling
labourers and taking a profit. And so it is with the biggest production
industry of today:
the software industry. Some of the biggests capitalist were programmers
once. But
at the same time many programmers are relegated to the backrooms, to
countries
with less wealth, to long hours, low pay, and low status. Then came the open
source
revolution. Workers did away with the fetishize solid (capital, the software
box) and
swapped their labour for the labour of others, when they made money they
made it
from the fruit of their labour, not by holding on to some intellectual
property.

The same could happen in the world of books too.

We have nothing to loose but our chains!

> Agreed! And the wrong way to do it (change publishing) is to disallow
readers from
> using their preferred medium to access the work.

I agree that the solution I am proposing is not ideal. I am suggesting that
the worker
would be free to sell the book as the "pro-version". Vistors would be free
to read
online or print pages, as long as they do not publish (bind those pages into
a book
for distribution.), they could also make (since they are getting the online
eBook free)
supplementary materials, extra chapters, footnotes, point out mistakes, help
with
layout.

This reallly could work. I think that authors would be happy to give away
the eBooks
so long as they can limit the distribution of paper-Books (their worked
turned into
capital in the hands of others).

Tim