Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 14 Apr 2006, at 13:21, Max Brown wrote:

> Who know "Against DRM 1.0"? It's a free copyleft license for artworks.
> http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM.html
>
> It contains two important clauses that CCPL don't include: a clause  
> about related rights and a clause against DRM.
> The first clause authorizes licensee to exercise related rights: on  
> the basis of the copyleft clause, performers cannot exercise  
> reserved rights concerning their performances of the work;  
> producers of phonograms cannot exercise reserved rights concerning  
> the phonograms in which they fix the work; broadcasting  
> organizations cannot exercise reserved rights concerning  
> broadcastings of the work.

The related rights CC licences allow you to exercise vary by license.  
The NC ones reserve collecting rights if I remember correctly. But  
control of related rights varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

> The second clause prevents the use of DRM to protect the work: if  
> licensor uses DRM, the license is not applicable to the work (on  
> the contrary, CCPL licensor can use DRM); if licensee uses DRM,  
> license is automatically void (on the contrary, CCPL licensee can  
> use DRM in a manner not inconsistent with the terms of the license).

BY-SA includes an anti-DRM clause. See 4.a of http:// 
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode

"You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or  
publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures  
that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with  
the terms of this License Agreement."

This ("technological measures") means DRM.

4.a could do with improving so it doesn't set off any DFSG alarms,  
but it should not be removed for version 3.0 . DRM (even carefully  
named and cleverly marketed DRM from Sun) is fundamentally  
incompatible with BY-SA as it makes the freedoms that BY-SA gives  
alienable. And I'm sure there's an argument to be made about how DRM  
will reduce NC users' ability to make millions off their work as well.

- Rob.