Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Nancy Ide wrote:
>  So far, no discussion, rational or otherwise, has
>  ensued.

Untrue. I have pointed out that if you work is legal with ARR, then
it is legal with CC, so no problem.

Otherwise, I have rationally pointed out that your goals are
diametrically opposed to the goals of users of SA and NC license
modules.

Let me make that more direct:

They don't work for you, because the authors don't WANT them
to work for you.

Otherwise, they'd just use CC-By.

Indeed, some people DO use CC-By, and will be quite happy to
help you out.  Even some authors who use more restrictive
licenses would probably consent to your use if you ask them to,
but a blanket complaint, as you have posted will not inspire
much sympathy.

OTOH, if you were in fact suggesting that a license module might
allow this kind of use, then you are correct that no discussion of
that has gone on.

Aside from the social faux pas of putting your listening audience
on the extreme defensive, because of your verbal attack on their
way of life, this is because you didn't provide much basis for  a
"rational" discussion of that subject:

1) What is this use exactly?

2) Why is it different from other prohibited uses?

3) Why is not covered by fair use? (Library indexing for, example,
and building word lists certainly are fair use, for example).

Your objection to non-commercial is something I'm inclined to
be sympathetic with -- there are so many consequences to that
module which I consider to be unintentional (a point which is
nevertheless debatable).

However, your objection to sharealike is a serious red-flag. That's
almost always a troll or a covert attempt to snatch the commons
back into private hands. That's something we see over and over
again, so we are naturally defensive about it.

One thought occurs to me:  If you are collecting material onto disks
to be used by people who want to do their own word analysis, then
you might conceiveably be concerned about SA works on a storage
medium implying that all other works on the same storage medium
must be SA. This is not true. This kind of "mere aggregation" is not
covered by any of the common copyleft licenses, and I believe that
CC-By-SA is no exception.

That makes it increasingly difficult to see the validity of any objection
to sharealike work, though.

As for non-commercial -- there's not much you can do about that.
We have debate going here over whether NC licenses make a "poor
commons" or "no commons at all" -- there's no question of them making
a "proper free commons".  That may be a problem, but ultimately
it's up to the users of the licenses, not the license-drafting organization,
to decide how they want to license their work.

(Though I still think more needs to be done to education the license
users of the consequences of using NC).

Cheers,
Terry

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