Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Wrye Modder <wrye_modder AT yahoo.com>]

First, I'm using my gaming handle because the
following questions are entirely in relation to my
work in the Morrowind modding community. More info in
my sig obviously. Also I'm active at UESP Wiki and on
the Elder Scrolls forums. 

===Background===
I think that the modding community is roughly in the
position that free software was before the GPL and
similar licenses were introduced. I.e., there's been
an informal version of openness, but things are
closing up somewhat. Mods are being pulled from
distribution, authors are objecting to seeing their
mods further modified. 

Mods have a nature that is partially artistic (lots of
original artwork, text, landscape, decorative
objects), and partially mechanical (mods can be quite
complex interactive systems which frequently require
bug fixes and/or benefit from upgrades). The works are
non-practical, and most modders are only on the scene
for a short while (~one year). Hence there are
advantages to be gained by "passing the torch" -- but
because modders don't continue to use their works (and
thus benefit from updates by other parties), and
because many modders are young and somewhat
self-involved, there is less of a tendency to do so.
Even distribution of past mods can be a problem when
the original modder has left the scene, the upload
site has gone down, and the modder has left no clear
instructions regarding copying rights. (Some more
info:
http://home.earthlink.net/~wrye_modder/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html.)

While games are usually regarded as having a short
lifespan, Morrowind modding has remained vibrant since
the game was released in 2002. There are on the order
of 5000 English language mods, and significant new
mods continue to be released. One recent mod was over
a gigabyte in size (uncompressed) and by many accounts
exceeded the two official expansions in quality.

I think that the problems that we're seeing are not
specific to Morrowind, but also occur for other games,
and are likely to be more common in the future. I've
heard of similar problems in the Sims 2 modding
community, and the increasing complexity of games
suggests that mods for them will also become more
complex and experience a longer lifespan, and thus
exhibit the same licensing problems as Morrowind mods.

I believe that there will also likely be an issue in
the future where game companies want to make mods made
for computer versions of the game available for
console versions of the game – and receive
subscription fees for doing so. (There's some
indication that the Bethesda EULA tries to lay the
groundwork for this.) I think that the economic
incentive is there, and that the architecture (higher
power consoles, higher resolution TV screens) is here
now or will be shortly).

So, in other words, I think that the need for open
modding/distribution licenses goes beyond Morrowind
and is/will be a general need in the gaming community.
And thus this is an opportunity for CC to step in and
play a role...

Okay, enough background! Here's my questions regarding
the CC licenses:

===Questions===
Non-Commercial
* Naturally, the inclination is to use this, but...
* Some download sites are paid in part through
advertising. Also some download sites offer premium
download services which charge extra for faster
download times. Considering the load on these servers
and the cost of running them, this is generally
accepted (remember that over 1 gigabyte mod? Even with
heavey compression, it weighs in at 394 Mb. Imagine
the bandwidth charges associated with making that
available for download by a *lot* of people in the
week following its release.)
* My question is, If I want to use the non-commercial
license, but allow the download sites to show
advertising and have charge for speedy fast download
queues, is that allowed by the NC license, or do I
have to modify it somehow? And if so, how do I modify
it?
* Hmm... Just saw this:
http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC. 

Collection vs. Inclusion
* Mods often include resources made by other authors,
which may be under a different license. For example,
someone may produce a set of models and textures for
trees, which someone else uses in a quest mod which
adds a new island. I would like to interpret this as a
collection (so long as the second mod does not alter
the models or textures themselves). However, one could
argue that like a collage that includes a photograph,
this is a derivative work.
* Modders and mod resource makers would be happy with
the "collection" interpretation. Does the CC support
this? Or is extra, clarifying text required, and if
so, how should it be added?

===Other===
* In general, I like the CC licenses, especially the
human readable form. For the modding community having
a simple summary is fairly crucial to success of
license use. 
* However, I'm a little surprised at relative disuse
of wiki.creativecommons.org for addressing special
case issues like wikis and game mods. As well as for
addressing concerns about use of the NC attribute.

Cheers,
..Wrye


Wrye Morrowind: http://home.earthlink.net/~wrye_modder/morrowind.html