Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

> On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 08:37:09AM -0500, Greg London wrote:
> [...]
>> I don't know if this is relevant, but
>> please see "Argumentum ad lazarum"
>> http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#lazarum
>>
>> Money is not inherently evil, so prohibiting it
>> doesn't actually solve any problem. And by prohibiting
>> commercial use of a Free work, you prohibit companies
>> such as Red Hat from using money as a way to expand
>> distribution, advertising, and awareness.
>
> But that's an argument against the use of an NC license to begin
> with.

And I'm arguing against using the NC license for
any Gift Economy project. If you are a writer
who is working on a market economy project,
then you could use CC-NC to leverage your work,
to let fans create fan-fic, to generate word-of-mouth, etc.
But if you're trying to create a gift economy project,
then I'd say use nothing but CC-SA.

> And it's not necessarily "money", it's "profit". There's a
> difference.

Well, see, I don't really see a difference.

my personal opinion on the matter
is that CC-NC is a market economy license,
that it is only used by individuals who wish
to give away some rights in exchange for something
else that may benefit them, such as generating
word-of-mouth about a work and increasing sales.

In that case, an author who is trying to make money
on their work may not intend to give their work
away for free to non-profit organizations.
I'm not entirely sure what CC-NC users are expecting.
But they may not be expecting that.

This is part of the reason for ironing out guidelines
to hopefully make it more clear. And to find out what
people are expecting. and hopefully get the license
wording to match up with expectations, or alter
expectations to match the license wording.

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