Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 20:02 +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> So if you want to make, say, a commercial computer game and wish to use
> content under the CC NC, this is no more difficult than to download the
> desired resources from whereever they are hosted on the internet during
> installation. The computer game maker (a commercial entity) is not the one
> distributing the NC content, and so does not fall afoul of the NC license.
> 
> A case in point is the MS web fonts, which could be distributed freely
> under an NC-like license. (Most) Linux distributions cannot (or dare not)
> distribute them, but you can install a package that runs a script which
> downloads the fonts from some web page somewhere that has them and then
> installs the fonts. (http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/)

AFAIK most distributions do not ship the package that contains the
download script.  If I am right, then presumably a commercial game
company with the same or higher risk profile than a Linux distribution
also would not ship code to download and use specific content they may
not actually include due to license.

> The point is that the NC licenses are not just bad because the scope of
> their protection is unclear - in many cases the protection offered is
> pretty much illusory.

By this argument copyright itself is illusory for anything posted
online.  This is a silly argument.  Sure, it is not possible to prevent
individuals from downloading anything posted online, but it is possible
to deter public uses.  If it weren't ASCAP would collect no fees,
theaters would pay nothing to movie studios, the FSF could not enforce
the terms of the GPL, etc.

IANAL, etc.

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