Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

rob AT robmyers.org wrote:
>  Quoting Greg London <email AT greglondon.com>:
> >> http://x.narya.net/static/terry/cc_colors.png
> >> http://x.narya.net/static/terry/cc_colors.svg
> >
> >> 4) The colors are the scheme I originally proposed, of course.
>
>  Those are very cool.
>
> > That copyleft is on the far left and public domain is in the middle
> > is a bit of an issue for me.

The order in this drawing was not meant to be significant.
Each of the badges, would of course be a separate image,
and could be in any layout you want.

As for the physical spectrum of light -- I don't find that view
particularly compelling. This is a psychological marketing
problem, so it is *color psychology* that matters, not color
physics.

> >> From a legal rights point of view,
> > a spectrum would have public domain at zero, copyleft at 1 and
> > copyright at 2.

Yes, that's true.  But I don't feel this is contradicted by my color
choices (more below).

>  Ordering the licenses depends how one defines "freedom". You keep
>  more creative rights over time with copyleft than you give away
>  economic rights with pd or pd-figleaf licenses (like BSD), for
>  example.

Quite so. One axis is "commons friendliness" (which seems like a
good axis for an organization named "Creative Commons"). In that
system, a simple spectrum from most to least commons-friendly
would follow the order in my diagram (more or less).

That interpretation is consistent with the "spectrum" physical
order. It might be relevant that that tends to be the "geekier"
way of looking at it (which people are familiar with the
wavelength-order of visible light? I am, of course, but then I'm
an astronomer.) -- because the people looking at it this way are
going to tend to be the free-software advocates (we're a
pretty geeky crowd).

My scheme is based on the "traffic signal metaphor" which
goes from "Green" (most free -- no limits) to "Red" (least free
-- many limits), with "Yellow" (and "Orange") representing the
intermediate "go cautiously" state.

I was original inspired by the LinuxTag music licenses for that.

For me, green has strong connotations of freedom for that
reason, and also because I associate it with wide open fertile
plains (perhaps the latter is an American view of things -- I do
live on the prairie).


In the traffic signal model, blue is "outside", which I think is
a useful metaphor as well -- because the philosophy of
copyleft asks you to think beyond the mere "limitation of
user freedom" model -- to think about the freedom of the
whole system.

Blue, as the color of sea and sky, also carries a sense of
freedom. But blue also carries the connotation of "loyalty"
(that's what the blue in the American flag is supposed to
represent -- and I think it's been used for that elsewhere as
well). And of course, one can regard copyleft as more "loyal",
since it keeps works "in the fold" of the commons.

And I think this psychological way of looking at it is more
appealling to humanities / artistic types (and the public
in general, to a lesser degree). I think the knee-jerk reaction
will be to regard "green" as most free and "blue" as something
odd or curious (but maybe that will attract people to find out
what it's about -- which is a good thing, IMHO).

As for layouts, I was originally thinking of a tuning fork diagram,
so that we don't have to determine whether copyleft is more or
less free than non-copyleft.  In any case, there'll be two dimensions
on a page, so you can do a bit more than this simple ordering.
That would also appear to be more convenient in terms of fitting
them into a browser window.

>  Possibly since PD, BSD (or BY, attribution aside) and copyleft are
>  all FSF-Free and DFSG-Free we could avoid a meltdown by agreeing that
>  all three are "free enough". NC and ND would be "less free", and ARR
>  would be "fair use only". Or something.

I think we do agree on that -- no meltdown required!

I used the mottos to make this distinction:

NO RIGHTS RESERVED -- Public Domain only
   1) because CC already uses this motto for PD
   2) because PD is non-controversial and generally understood
   3) because it emphasizes that no claim at all is made

FREE AS IN FREEDOM -- Free licenses (as agreed on by FSF, DFSG, OSI,
   the new "freedom defined" / "free expression definition", & me)
   1) because this is Stallman's favorite phrase
   2) it has great 'brand recognition' (because of 1)
   3) it acknowledges the bond to free software and distributions
   (these are in "cool colors": blue and green)

SOME RIGHTS RESERVED -- Non-Free CC licenses with distribution allowances
   1) because this is CC's existing motto
   2) because these are the licenses most associated with CC
   3) because these are the licenses most popular with CC artists
   "principle of least change"
   (these are in "warm colors": yellow, orange, and red)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED -- Only ARR, not a CC license
   1) this label is intended to be used for classification, not promoted
   (red only)

YOUR RIGHTS REMOVED -- EULAs only
   1) because we don't like EULAs!
   2) this is literally what distinguishes them from licenses: they
       remove fair use rights by contractual agreement (or that's
       the theory, anyway).
   3) this label is also intended only for classification, not promotion
       (in fact it's meant to draw attention to the hazards of EULAs, by
       providing a means of enumerating their particular restrictions).
   4) to be honest, I was giggling a little when I drew this one, so it's
       only half serious -- but it was asked for in a previous thread  on
       the list
   5) the little black square icons are meant to be modular tags for
       particular kinds of EULA clauses, of course, and would result
       in more than just this one badge -- they're in inverted colors to
       emphasize that they are restrictions beyond copyright law
   (red only)

In the end, though, I'm not going to defend copyleft=blue,
non-copyleft=green to the death.  It makes more sense to me,
and I will make the case for it, but my strongest argument is
that they should have different colors, but the same motto.

If the consensus is that my scheme makes less sense than
the reverse, I'm cool with that, it's just a matter of twiddling
fill patterns, after all.  But I still think psychology trumps
physics, so arguments should be on that basis.

For myself, I'm not convinced that the general public even
*knows* the "ROYGBIV" order of colors in the rainbow.

I also like the fact that there are two different interpretations
of "freedom" and two different interpretations of the color
order, so it's possible for both sides to claim victory here. ;-)

Cheers,
Terry

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