Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gemsling <gemsling AT gmail.com>]

Ron Kaminsky <ronkaminsky AT yahoo.com> wrote:
>I wonder if www.archive.org has their own forum --- it might be
>a more logical place for this thread.

It would probably be a very good place to discuss this issue. Your
comments on preservation remind me of talks by Brewster Kahle of
Internet Archive fame. It largely comes down to this question: can an
Internet accessible site/service be a library, or is placing something
online the same as publishing?

My personal view is that no new licence type is needed. You should be
able to simply put the work into an archive or library and preserve it
- no permission required. You may want to restrict access to the work
until the copyright runs out, but that is a process issue, not a
licensing one. For example, the Internet Archive could say to
copyright holders, "okay, we'll not make your work available, but we
are going to keep a copy so that we can make it available when
copyright expires".

Perhaps what you are proposing is a way in which creators agree in
advance to give up particular rights at an agreed date, instead of
waiting until copyright expires (death + 50-70 years). The "Founders'
Copyright" scheme from Creative Commons works like this: full rights
for 14 or 28 years, then the work goes public domain (but I've heard
that it actually moves to a CC licence instead of public domain). I
believe only a handful of creators (if that) have actually used the
Founders' Copyright option.

It's great to see people trying to preserve work - you even consider
paying a fee for access to works you want to preserve - but I'm not
sure that adding an extra licence type to Creative Commons is
necessary or wise. In fact, if you're paying the artist, you've
already got a transaction taking place; you could to that transaction
by creating a very simple contract stating that the author agrees for
the work to be republished under a particular CC licence as of a
specific date in the future.

-- 
Nathan Jones