Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Justin Morgan <feedback AT corfizz.com>]

I am not a lawyer either, and if you wait a little longer I think  
you'll get some other non-lawyers pointing to somewhere where this  
question has already been asked, but as far as I know, you can always  
change the license of a work after a certain time. If you start off  
with cc-by-nc-sa, for example, then after 5 years you could  
'downgrade' it to, maybe, cc-by-sa. I think this is better than going  
in the other direction (i.e. don't release under a free license and  
then re-release the same work under a more restrictive one), but if  
you do this, there are some multi-licensing complications to consider  
because the work is effectively protected by both licenses at the  
same time.

The next closest thing to what you want is probably Founder's  
Copyright, where you retain the full copyright of your work and then  
it expires after 14 years (I think) instead of the usual death+70  
years (jurisdiction-dependent as well, I think). Creative Commons can  
help with the Founder's thing if you take a look.

Don't take my advice without exploring it yourself and getting second  
and third and fourth opinions of course!

On 29 Dec 2005, at 13:25, Mario Behling wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I am new to the list and I am not sure, if this is the right place  
> for this
> post.
>
> I am a photographer and journalist and I was wondering if there is  
> already a
> solution to the following problem.
>
> When I publish content, I normally choose a license, that does not  
> include
> commercial usage. If a commercial enterprise wants to use my work,  
> they
> could pay for it. That is the idea. However, I would not mind if a
> commercial enterprise uses my work, let's say, after five years  
> after the
> initial publishing date. This could increase interest in my work and
> publicity.
>
> Ok, I could just change licenses myself, but it would be nice to be  
> able to
> choose a licensing option, that frees up restrictions  
> (automatically and
> gradually) after some time.
>
> Of course I am not a lawyer. So I am not sure, if this would be  
> possible.
> But, as far as I could see, this would also solve some problems  
> concerning
> licence incompatibilities: If many people would choose such an  
> option, it
> would automatically enhance the compatibility of free content over  
> time.
>
> Thank you for an answer!
>
> Ciao from Berlin!
>
> Mario
>
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