Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 12:53 am, Greg London wrote:
> Founders's isn't being adopted in any significant numbers.
> I think any sort of term-limit-non-commercial license
> would fare even worse.
>
> CC-NonCommercial is a market economy license. It is a
> license that a creator can use to trade non-commercial
> rights in exchange for the possible benefit of generating
> word-of-mouth about the work, getting the fans involved,
> and eventually making more commercial sales.

CC-BY-NC-SA ---------- 3 years -----> CC-BY-SA

could get my word of mouth whereas CC-BY-NC-SA is not going to get any word 
of 
mouth from me. The question then becomes, are there enough like me for this 
to matter. It also is, if such things eventually become the norm, what place 
in history is going to be earned by the first big players to set the example?
>
> If CC-NC sunsets to either CC-BY or CC-FC, then any artist
> who is using CC-NC strictly for the personal benefit it gives
> them has no incentive to adopt CC-sunset. They are using CC-NC
> to try to get more sales. So they have little incentive to
> commit to a sunset license.

But what about those who use CC-NC not "stricktly" for personal gain?

Also, In my thinking, I assume that everything should sunset to BY-SA. 
(Naturally this is at the creators discretion on original works to choose the 
sunset to license.) YMMV.

>
> If the creator is not strictly in it for personal benefit,
> but may want to give something to the community, they
> would be open to using CC-Sunset, but they might just as
> likely switch from CC-NC to CC-BY on their own.

Yes, but they get no word of mouth from me until they make that choice 
whereas 
they can get it from the beginning with the time release option.
>
> And creators interested in contributing to gift economies
> would be more like to use CC-BY or CC-SA straight out of
> the box.

Perhaps. Again, since we have no settled And proven business models, 
experimentation is not unwise.
>
> I don't see how offereing the sunset license will enable
> people to change their behaviours any more than the existing
> licenses already do.

It would allow them to gain some buzz from a set of people they cannot gain 
such buzz from now. And to collaborate with the same to everyone's possible 
mutual benefit.
>
> > The NC licensing scheme is the most popular CC license -- and while
> > I think that's evidence that artists don't fully appreciate the limits it
> > is placing on them, I also think it indicates that the artists are not
> > prepared to take the risk on unproven and largely untried business
> > models proposed for fully free-licensed aesthetic works.
>
> A sunset license doesn't change this fear. And if they're in it
> for personal gain, then they'll never want to give their rights
> up. And if they're in it to make some money and contribute to
> a greater project, then they'll likely do it on their own timeline,
> when they've felt they've made enough money.

Not necessarily.
>
> If people are afraid  of taking a risk on an unproven and
> largely untried business model, then getting them to commit
> up front about how many years before they'll make enough money
> to put their work in the public domain isn't going to calm
> those fears. It will make them worse, to no direct benefit
> to the creator that I can see.

Well, knowing that you still have 3 (or whatever) years exclusivity may make 
you more willing to experiment. As to the direct benefits of doing so, see 
above.
>
> > counter-examples that have been raised (e.g. "Wikipedia") are
> > "successes" at creating content, but they are not "successes" in the
> > sense of paying the contributors.  Now, I acknowledge that this
>
> That is the point of a gift economy. Poeple contribute freely.
> The cost to contribute is lowered so much that people can
> make contributions on the side, in their spare time, and it
> doesn't impact or hinder their day jobs, etc. Proprietary
> jobs hire 500 people to work 2,000 hours a year to create
> a one-million-man-hour-per-year result.

Greg, I know you are a strong proponent that copyleft is a gift economy, but 
some of us don't see it that way and thus have other motivations when it 
comes to our contributing to the copyleft wealth of the world.
>
> Gift economies work by making it so easy to contribute that
> one million people can each contribute one hour, and you end
> up with a one-million-man-hour-per-year result for free.
>
> It might be interesting if you could figure out a way to
> handle micropayments for contributers in some meaningful
> way that couldn't be easily gamed by folks who would
> otherwise churn the text for money. But then suddenly
> you've added a ton of overhead that needs to be handled.
> so a million hours of contributions yields half a million
> hours of result. And you also would ahve to figure out
> a way to pay contributers, meaning you'd have to be profitable,
> and if you have a profitable business model, you'll be
> pulled to go with All Rights Reserved or some more
> restrictive license. Micropayments and more restrictive
> licenses sort of dulls the altruistic reasons that people
> contribute to gift economies in the first place.
>
> > empowerment of amateur creative work is desirable, but do we
> > really want to destroy the niche of the "professional artist"?
>
> hm, that's an interestingly ambiguous question.
>
> If there is a form of expression that *could* be handled
> completely by gift economy projects that are FLOSS from
> the get-go, why, exactly, would there be a need to pay
> someone to do the exact same thing?

Even now, in your "gift economy" GPL software world, many get paid fulltime 
to 
contribute. Someone, somewhere sees some benefit to paying (if not a need to 
pay) someone to do the exact same thing.
>
> Which then begs the question as to whether that is possible
> or not. The only expression I know of that could possibly
> eclipse proprietary versions is operating system software,
> but even Linux hasn't managed to kill Microsoft, so perhaps
> the question is a red herring.
>
> i.e. the only way a gift economy can "destroy" a
> professional niche is if profesional work has been
> eclipsed by the gift economy.
>
> At which point, this is basically asking whether or
> not we want the printing press to put the monastic
> scribes out of work, only with different players.

Copyright, in a snese, is a scheme to allow people to get paid for something 
other than their "work" though.

all the best,

drew
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