Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

White, Phil wrote:
>  The 'work' involved is a collaborative group effort. As such, there
>  may be one author, or there may be many collaborators. Although I
>  want the work to be available to all, I want to retain control over
>  the work itself - and this seems to present a conundrum. To try to
>  explain, this is my current solution (though I don't like it):
>
>  I act as publisher/distributor. Authors/contributors assign all
>  rights to me on submission of the work, and assert that they have the
>  authority to do so.
>
>  I release the work, published on a Wiki, under a CC licence. The work
>  is to be attributed by reference to the URL and date the document was
>  copied.
>
>  Now the problem: This is a living work. The world changes, so a
>  Derivatives licence would be logical, BUT I do not want derivatives
>  being used or distributed from anywhere other than from the original
>  site - which implies a No Derivative Works licence. But for the work
>  to have any relevance for me, it has to be published on a Wiki, which
>  is constantly changing. Are these two situations incompatible? How
>  can I allow derivative works "only on the condition that it is
>  published on my Wiki"?

Point 1: What you are doing is consistent with a CC-By-ND license. You
are the copyright holder, so the ND doesn't bind you. The ND is the terms
everyone else gets (including the people who contribute to your project).

Legally, you should just keep doing what you are doing.

Point 2: What are you afraid of? This ND business is destructive to the
very community impulse that you are relying on to get people to help
you. You should just use CC-By-SA. That way, other sites can carry the
information, but you are free to incorporate any changes they make back
into your copy (what have you got to lose?). The SA ensures symmetry
with your contributors, which increases their motivation to contribute,
which likely means your project will prosper.

The ND terms, by contrast, are proprietary control-freak behavior
which is likely to be counter-productive and might possibly smother
the project or create 'bad blood' between you and your contributors.

IOW, the conflict that you feel is a *real* conflict, not a legal 
fiction. You
shouldn't be using ND because it's shooting yourself in the foot, not
because it's somehow "legally difficult".

Consider this -- what's to stop all the people who contribute to your
non-free wiki from pulling up stakes and starting a free wiki? That's
what I'd advise them to do, because basically, as things stand, you
are asymmetrically profiting from their labor. What did you do to
deserve the special position of being the only one who can control the
community-built product?  If you didn't do something pretty special,
then why wouldn't your contributors form their own commons where
they get a fair shake? By creating a non-free forum, you invite that
kind of behavior.

Of course, you haven't said anything specific about what you're doing,
so this may apply either more or less to your situation accordingly.

Cheers,
Terry

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