Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Erik Moeller wrote:
>  On 6/9/06, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:

[Re: copyleft vs non-copyleft]
> > Well, I prefer for there to be a distinction, because it matters to
> > some people.
>
>  Sure, but it *shouldn't* matter. It's unnecessary infighting among
>  groups that fundamentally share very similar values. I say that as a
>  person who made the transition from favoring copyleft to favoring
>  public domain, and who has argued both sides of the fence. But again,
>  that is of course a political stance, and given that I think it's
>  silly to fight about it, I won't get into a big argument about
>  whether they should have different colors either. :-)

It is NOT a political issue that 'it matters' -- it's a legal one:

E.g. #1:
   *  Bob has a BSD-licensed project
   *  Alice posts GPL-licensed content
   Bob can't use Alice's content unless he's willing to change his license.
   So it matters to Bob that Alice's content is copylefted.

= Legal repercussions for users wishing to understand the
   license terms under which an item is offered.

E.g. #2:
   * Bob wishes to release his work "under a free license"
   * He is worried about being "exploited" by a commercial
      user re-licensing his work
   * He wants to use a copyleft to help with this
   So it matters to Bob whether licenses are copyleft or not.

=Legal repercussions for creators wishing to understand
  the consequences of their licensing choices.

IMHO, it doesn't matter which system you favor -- you still want
to know the difference.

What are political issues are 'which is better' and 'which is more free'.
Like you, I prefer not to enter that debate, and I think I won't
comment lest it trigger yet another thread on the subject. ;-)

> > Likewise, an argument could be made that both NC and ND should be
> > yellow, instead of having an orange at all, but I thought it's nice
> > to have some distinction (but yellow and orange have very similar
> > psychological impact). Personally, I find ND less threatening than
> > NC, because I don't feel like it's "pretending to be free" -- the
> > artist surely knows they aren't promoting any kind of commons with
> > an ND work. But the ND is both less 'free' and less
> > 'commons-friendly' than NC, IMHO.
>
>  Well, that depends on what you mean by "commons-friendly".
> The
>  problem with NC is that it causes incompatibility with works under
>  more permissive licenses -- it promotes an isolated NC pseudocommons.

Yes, we've been discussing that recently (again ;-)).

The point here is that NC does allow for *some* commons activity,
but it is very limited.  Greg London, for example, has argued that
because of this it is "not a commons at all", whereas I've mainly
characterized that as "a poor commons".

This is why I wouldn't be comfortable with NC licenses being 'green'
or considered 'free'.

However, I think it is fair to say that they are "more free" than
NC-ND, and (possibly) more free than ND. ND works, can be
used commercially, can be distributed through more channels,
but they do not contribute to any pool of reusable material.

For these reasons, these licenses should be "used with caution",
so I use "caution" colors.  But not "red", which is more absolute.

(I did use that for the sampling license, because it is such a tiny
concession from "all rights reserved" that it's hardly worth
mentioning -- it's actually just restoring a fair use right that
everybody thought they had right into the 1980s).

>  Fortunately, through some recent talks, I've been getting the
>  feeling that the free content ideology is catching on, especially in
>  academia.

That's a good thing. And it darned well ought to, academic research
has long depended on these kinds of freedoms.

> > "1" -- single CPU limitations and other things that prevent you
> > from having backup copies, etc. Can't burn songs to CD, etc.
>
>  I think this doesn't work at all - it's neither intuitive nor
>  cool-looking. My first guess was that it had something to do with
>  copy prevention flags (1/0). Perhaps, if you want a no-backup symbol,
>  something like a "no rescue kit" logo would work.

I'll bite.  What does *that* look like? ;-D

Cheers,
Terry

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