Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

drew Roberts wrote:

> This idea could have some legs. I have asked about timed and event release 
> licenses in the past with no feedback. (iirc) I think I might be interested 
> in a total revenue release model as well as a time release model.
>  
A community buy-out license, representing what NaN did with
Blender?  Yeah, that's not a bad idea.

The community would like it, because it frees the most popular
content -- the song *everyone* wants to listen to, for example,
yet it makes it clear that the artist will profit from it.  For that
matter, it even gives the community a direct incentive to see
the artists succeed if they like their work.

It's less desireable for the "long tail", of course.

Both clauses are actually parametric, of course (they take
arguments, if you will: duration or quantity of income), which is
not something CC currently has a mechanism to support. The
F1, F3, F7, F14 concept is a kludge to get around the fact that
you can't specify the number better.

Of course, if you are focused on the recording industry conceptualizations,
there's the "gold" / "platinum" labels (like record albums).  I forget
what the quantities are, but they mean some specific number of
units sold.  That's possibly better than a money quantity (also
avoids region-coding, currency systems, and a slew of other
headaches).

Obvious module names, though:  Au, Pt.  ;-)

(Okay, my scientific education is showing, I admit it).

And of course, F14-Pt should mean it expires when either condition
is met.

Alternatively, the "parametric clause" concept might be fit into the
CC scheme, so that instead of seven modules (e.g. F1, F3, F7, F14,
Ag, Au, Pt) you have just two (FL, #$) and even more flexibility. It
doesn't create a lot of legal problems, because these are terms that
can be neatly isolated from qualitative license conflicts (I think).

It's also interesting, because it would open the door to some alternatives
that have been suggested, such as implementations of Marshall Van
Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker's "Optimal Licensing" models.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=639165

(Not certain I want that, but it's innovation, anyway).

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com