Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 15:32 -0500, drew Roberts wrote:
> And I think it was a bad idea to make BY mandatory. Granted, I think that 
> for 
> most of what I intend to do, I would choose BY anyway. I do see other times 
> though where I would want to choose NOBY-SA where not only would I not get 
> attribution, but no one making derivatives would be allowed to require 
> attribution either.

Actually SA is one of the best reasons for making BY element mandatory
(of course any licensor may disclaim attribution, but not force others
to do so), though I don't know if it was ever elucidated.  Bare SA
creates a small pool of content that cannot be reused in BY-SA works.
If you want momentum behind a single copyleft style license, that sounds
like a really bad way to go.

> > If BY-SA is the license that has the most powerful combination of
> > allowing reuse while mandating continued freedom, won't it eventually
> > become the most popular license regardless of what other options are
> > offered, just as GPL became most popular in the face of less restrictive
> > and various non-free (shareware, etc) competition?
> 
> That is my reasoning and my hope. It is just that even if I am right, we 
> may 
> end up with many wasted years and unusable works by allowing NC and ND in 
> the 
> meantime. Such is life in the tropics.

Yes, and there's no use complaining about the giant insects, nor NC and
ND, as there's zero chance they're going away.  Rather than carping move
to a temperate zone, or promote free-as-in-your-definition-of-freedom
content.

> > The best thing those of you who don't like NC (or ND) can do to further
> > your cause is to promote use and reuse of PD, BY, and BY-SA content.
> 
> And to create new BY-SA content. Right now, PD and BY are not much better 
> for 
> fixing the overall copyright problems the world finds itself in, but I 
> thank 
> those creating PD and BY works anyway as they are valuable to me whereas 
> those with NC and ND options are all but useless. (Commons wise.)

Not just new BY-SA content, but reuse PD and BY, relicensing as BY-SA.

> > Drew Roberts has the right idea:
> > > I am already streaming BY-SA and BY music on bysa Radio:
> > >
> > > http://yp.peercast.org/?find=bysa&Submit=Search
> >
> > Though I think a podcast would be far more effective than a stream.
> 
> It might be, but I have other plans and additional reasons for going the 
> radio 
> station route.

Good luck in your ventures.

> Thanks for you thoughtful comments.

You're welcome. :)  Too bad my comments are not those of a lawyer, not
legal advice, etc.

-- 
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://creativecommons.org/about/people#21