Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

> Those authors are only using CC-BY-NC-ND because Creative Commons is
> trendy.  They should either commit to a real license like CC-BY-NC or
> CC-BY-NC-SA or just go with all rights reserved.

Why is it OK for Cory Doctorow to use NC-ND but not anyone else?
I don't quite understand your logic.  You've allowed for him to
license his works NC-ND, but anyone else who does it is just
being trendy? Or maybe I misunderstood your comment about Cory.

>>      Creative Commons isn't really in the business of coercing people
>> to only use certain licenses the way someone like Richard Stallman
>> demands a license be GNU-GPL or GNU-FDL and that's it.
>
> ¿Who said anything about coercing people?  Anyone who uses CC-BY-NC-
> ND is only a fairweather Johnson with no real commitment to the
> ideals of Creative Commons.  They are free to leave or truly commit.

"Free to leave or truly commit" is coercion. In game-theory terms,
you want to perform a strategic maneuvar that would prevent everyone
else from making a move they *would* like to make, but because of
your move, they can no longer do so. That is the epitome of coercion.

The problem is in the phrase "or truly commit". Commit to what?
What you want? or what other people want? People want NC-ND.
That you say they haven't "truly committed" for using such a
license ignores the fact that they have committed to exactly
what Creative Commons has committed to: creating licenses that
allow authors to give away *some* of their rights. *Some*. as in
*Some* rights reserved.

And the value of "some" is chosen by the author, not handed down
by any central authority. The only thing CC has done in limiting
its licenses is to try to keep them from hair-splitting into a
hundred different minor variations and try to keep them at least
cumulative-compatible. i.e. cc-by + cc-nc = cc-by-nc


>>      CC writes licenses for Gift Economies and for Market Economies.
>> CC does not have a "manifesto" like Richard Stallman does, banging
>> tables demanding that people only use certain licenses to achieve
>> the result they want.
>
> ¿Why not have a constitution?  A constitution protections against
> absolute corruption.  As an example, a constitution has stopped the
> fascists in my country from grabbing absolute power.  Due to the
> voter-verifiable movement the fascists loose the ability to fix
> elections — we have made so much progress that the evil Walden “the
> electionfixer” O’Dell quit.  The fascists because of the voter-
> verifiable movement are likely to loose one of the legislative bodies
> this year.  If we did not have a constitution, the fascists would
> have absolute power and my country would be a fascistic theocracy at
> war against all of the mideast instead of of country. with people
> like you and I up against a wall, facing a firing squad.

While I appreciate your situation, I believe we've gotten off topic.
There are no copyright firing squads that I know of.

> Having the ND not apply to noncommercial works would make the
> license more compatible with each other.  Any work licensed as CC-BY-
> NC or CC-BY-NC-SA could incorporate CC-BY-ND material just as it does
> CC-BY.

Again, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how
copyright and licenses (in general, not just CC) work.
NoDerivatives means exactly what it says: no derivatives.
To make ND mean "no commercial derivatives" is playing name games,
and would be confusing as hell to explain to people new to CC.

>>      But, you can make the suggestion, and this is the place to make
>> it, so there you go. But as I said, CC did some census a while back
>> and found the most popular CC license being used was CC-NC-ND.
>
>       Popularity is not the best way to decide what is popular — slavery
> was very popular once and still is in some places.  At any rate CC-BY-
> ND is not the most popular.

Creative Commons responds to public pressure for licenses.
The Sampling license was created after musicians wanted
that license which was not available through any existing
CC license. If you can generate public pressure for CC
to make NoDerivatives only apply to Commercial works,
then CC might actually make the change. But otherwise,
if you have no public support, do you intend to *force*
your view into power? That approach doesn't always give the
right answer either.

>>      The thing is that the people who used CC-NC-ND would NOT use any
>> other license, so if you demanded they drop NoDerivatives, then
>> they would probably drop the CC license completely and they'd
>> either go back to "all rights reserved" or some other organization
>> would write a non-commercial-no-derivatives license and it wouldn't
>> be creative commons.
>
>       ¡Good riddance to bad rubbish!  They are not committed to the
> movement anyway.  As for them using other licenses from other
> organizations, that will cause no compatibility issues because CC-BY-
> NC-ND is not compatible with any license including itself.

Again, there is no "movement".

Well, there is, but it is not the same as your movement.

CC's "movement" is to offer licenses that creators want.
Your "movement" appears to be the position that noncommercial
derivatives should be a minimum requirement for any CC license.

They're not the same movement.

>>      But, once again, you can make whatever license request you wish
>> right here on this list. But I wouldn't hold your breath for it to
>> happen.
>
>       I shall do so.  I want to get the wording just right so I shall
> sleep on it and start writing tomorrow.  I have decided one thing
> however:
>
>       CC-BY-ND-SA confuse people.  By default, in a universe where ND
> becomes NC for noncommercial works, people would not have to do a
> thing to effectively dual license a work as CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-NC
> because ND becomes NC nor noncommercial works  but if the want the
> noncommercial work to be sharealike it is easier to understand it al
> dual-licensed as CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-NC-SA.  People are less likely to
> get confused.

What you've been saying is this:

"non-commercial-derivatives should be allowed by any and
all Creative Commons licenses, even the NoDerivatives license."

People will understand that. They may not support it, but
at least they'll understand what you're asking for.

Greg

Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/