Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 10 Dec 2005, at 22:38, drew Roberts wrote:

> I don't think the point of the post was that the person had  
> specifically
> chosen the license to frustrate specifically you.

My hugely inflated ego aside, I was trying to explain why I might  
want to mis-treat the work rather than simply use it in an  
incompatible way. :-)

> I think it was that they
> specifically chose the  license to frustrate anyone who wants to do  
> what you
> want to do with their work. They don't want the things done which  
> you want to
> do. It has nothing to do with prior misuse as I read it.

If I am motivated by a general desire to mis-use the work rather than  
a legitimate need to use the work that is accidentally frustrated by  
the license, I will simply exploit whichever license is used in order  
to cause mischief.

For example I can take a Wikipedia FDL article, produce a derivative  
and add the words "wikipedia sux0rs!" as cover text (I hasten to add  
that I personally love Wikipedia, this is just an example), and the  
derivative is made both offensive *and* unusable to Wikipedia.

Incidentally, this is another reason why CC's "compatibility" is so  
problematic. Under the FDL you can make derivatives of a work  
incompatible with the original work if they are trying to mis-use FDL  
as a general purpose copyleft license rather than as a computer  
manual license that allows you to attach un-editable political texts.  
For Wikipedia, FDL can be made incompatible with *itself*. This is  
something CC cannot solve with a multi-license facade or a BY-SA  
backdoor.

- Rob.