Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

> Now, I would really like someone to actually put thought into this issue
> and give a real reply, instead of these idiotic non-rebuttals that I
> have heard a million times. Your logic is crappy and 'blowing off the
> troll' is not the same thing as making a coherent argument.

Well, you put some thought into the issue. What use/uses specifically
do you wish to prohibit? A license needs legally binding wording,
not vague references to "unethical uses". That's the first problem.
And you'll have to decide what it is that you want to prevent.

Then, your work will only be compatible with licenses that are
BSD-style licenses, i.e. licenses that are Public Domain in nature,
rather than the more restrictive Copyleft licenses, because copyleft
will not allow your specific ethical restrictions to be added on top
of the original copyleft license.

This means that your work will NEVER, EVER be able to be rolled into
a GNU-GPL or GNU-FDL or CC-SA work. if that isn't a problem, then
continue. If it is a problem, then you'll have to give up your
pursuit of ethical enforcement via a copyright license. Because you
will NEVER, EVER be able to change all the works that are GNU-GPL
unless you write every single author/contributer to a GNU-GPL project
and get their permission to dual license their work under your new
license.

at this point, you've either settled with the fact that your
work will only be compatible with BSD-style licenses, or you've
successfully launched and completed one of the most massive
letter-writing campaigns the world has ever seen and secured
permission from every GNU-GPL contributer (or their heirs) to relicense
their work under your new license.

Now, the last question is this:
Will your "ethical" license prevent some nutjob from making
weapons of mass destruction?

If so, great, nominate yourself for the nobel prize.
If not, then why, exactly did you put everyone through this work?

-- 
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/