Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:25:33 +0100
"Mario Behling" <mb AT mariobehling.de> wrote:
> 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.

You can date the release of material. That's not so
difficult.  It's the license grant that does this:

"Until ####/##/## you may redistribute this work under the
terms of license X, after that time, you may redistribute it
under the terms of license Y"

Or alternatively, ", after that time the work is granted to
the Public Domain"

(I prefer X="By-NC-SA" and Y="By" or Y="By-SA" myself, but
in generally, I think it's less legally questionable to use
a specific license than a public domain grant).

Those things are completely straightforward.  Just because
you refer to a license doesn't mean you've invoked it yet,
you are perfectly free to set dates. 

You will note that I suggest using a *specific* sunset date,
instead of saying something like "after 5 years from date of
copyright", because it creates awkwardness if the date
changes (a collaborative work, for example, may be regarded
as having a sliding copyright date, since later edits may be
under a later year than earlier ones).  I'm sure you could
make it work so you can use boilerplate, but the specific
date just makes all that nastiness go away -- you know, and
the recipient knows, unambiguously when the terms will
change.

Of course, IANAL.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com