Development of Creative Commons licenses

[wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>]

----- Original Message -----
From: rob AT robmyers.org
To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:34:27 +0000
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Fwd: Re: Discussion Draft - Proposed License 
Amendment to Avoid Content Ghettos in the Commons


>Basically, if you publish a work SA I can then produce an FDL work including
>your work with invariant sections that misrepresent and otherwise abuse it. I
>can change your work to fit in with my work, making a seamless whole.
>
>You then cannot do the same to my work because it is in invariant sections.
>
>Now you can obviously abuse my work under SA. But I can change it back, keep
>anyactual improvements or constructive additions you make, and modify your 
>work
>to either refute or do the same to you as you have to me.
>
>Under plain SA without FDL-relicensing nonsense you can still aggregate the 
>SA
>work with ND grimness and alter the SA work to fit. But you cannot make and
>distribute a new single work this way.
>
>If I FDL-ed my work I could put my own invariants in to pre-empt this. So 
>this
>move makes BY-SA effectively redundant in favour of a licence that doesn't 
>have
>the same effect or intentions.
>
>It doesn't take a wiki to show that this is a bad idea.
>
>- Rob.

I think you are misunderstanding what could go into the Invariant Sections. 
The problem, as far as porting a derivative of CC-BY-SA'd work into 
GFDL, is not that bad. 

GFDL defines Invariant Sections as follows:

"The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections ... 
If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not 
allowed 
to be designated as Invariant."

And a Secondary Section is 
"A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter 
section of the Document that deals exclusively with the 
relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to 
the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and 
contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall 
subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of 
mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) 
The relationship could be a matter of historical connection 
with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, 
commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position 
regarding them."

(Both quotes are from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html, 
ver.1.2 of GFDL) 

So, it is not possible to take a CC-BY-SA'd book chapter, 
and release half of its derivative as Invariant Section and 
other half the main part of the work under GFDL. 

In my tentative opinion, the idea of the Invariant Section 
is close to the 4.c. of CC-BY-SA. 

"... You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work 
and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are 
utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, 
if applicable) if supplied, and/or (ii) if the Original Author 
and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g. a 
sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution 
in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other 
reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; the title 
of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, 
the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies 
to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to 
the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and 
in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use 
of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation 
of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original 
Work by Original Author"). Such credit may be implemented in any 
reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a 
Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit 
will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears 
and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable 
authorship credit."

(From http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode )

As I see, the CC's provision is more flexible - "reasonable to the 
medium," and "to the extent reasonably practiceable" are the keys. 
GFDL's provisions tell us simply to preserve certain stuff as it is. 

The difference is in part because of the different types of 
"Work" the licenses assume - CC is designed to be applicable to 
works in various media, while GFDL is for documents, and the 
basic assumption I think is "if you publish a document, it should 
not be a big deal to keep some pages intact from the original."
The difference is in part because of the extent to which licenses 
want to protect the wishes of the authors from malicious licensees. 

My tentative opinion about how CC should be changed is that 
when a derivative work is released under GFDL, Invariant Sections could 
be prohibited. The elements that should be added or kept in the Original 
CC-BY-SA work can be added or kept as license notice, copyright notice, 
network location, and History, as in GFDL. 


Tomos