Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Phil,

obviously Greg can talk for himself and if you have been around here for a 
while, you will know that he is not shy about doing so.

That said, I may be able to offer some words to put a different slant on the 
matter and perhaps calm the waters or ease the tensions.

On Thursday 22 June 2006 12:43 pm, White, Phil wrote:
> Greg,
>
> Firstly, may I thank you for your opinions. I do value them, along with
> everybody else's that have taken the time to respond to my emails.
>
> That said, I came to this list looking for methods to solve a problem,
> rather than a debate about the motivation behind my actions and to
> justify the same. Whilst doing so, I have tried to be as polite as
> possible. Perhaps I should apologise for not being as eloquent as I
> should be, but then again...

The thing is some of us here have our own viewpoints and some of us may, and 
I 
do, generally want to determine if it is worth my time to try and help you. 
(That is the general you which I will bring up a gain further down.)
>
> Most of what you have said before I agree with. I have already said that
> I tend towards your viewpoint. Your comments on the 'difficulty'
> encountered when ensuring that an original author is notified of changes
> made is relevant. But your apparent 'fanaticism' towards one license (or
> rather, against one) dilutes your argument greatly.

Are you sure it is Greg that you think is a fanatic towards or against a 
particular license? Now if you accused me of pushing BY-Sa to exclusion of 
the other CC licenses, that would be closer to correct in my view.
>
> > This would not be considered a Free license.
>
> Funnily enough, I am aware of that fact, thank you. I used the word
> 'freedom', rather than 'Free'. Incidentally, if you wish to nit-pick
> and/or state the obvious, the CC licenses are not devoid of failings;
> Gnu.org has something to say on this, and I'm not going to dissent from
> their opinion!

No doubt, BY-SA has problems. I really would like to dream up some way to 
require the GPL's equivalent of sourde code for one, but so far, we never 
seem to get anywhere when discussing this for the general case.
>
> > You are talking about a market economy license
> > where the license is designed to benefit you
> > over everyone else.
> > Which means you soak up
> > all the contributions from people, have them sign
> > copyright over to you, and then when they've made
> > the work even better, you have the sole right to sell
> > it to MajorCorp and leave your contributers in the dust.
>
> This is the second time you have besmirched my character. I politely
> ignored it the first time - I do not do so the second. If you have
> mystical insight into my motivations, you would not need to make such a
> comment. As you do not, you should not comment unless you know a lot
> more than you do.

Here we go with the general "you." Phil, Greg can answer specifically as to 
what he meant, but I for one never read this as him speacking to you as you 
but to you as enyone in your position and not as to what you intended to do, 
but as to what you would be legally allowed to do in the absence of other 
agreements.
>
> If you want to crusade for freedoms, perhaps you should consider a more
> fundamental 'right/freedom':- that of 'innocent until proven guilty'.
> You have spent more time attacking an alleged hidden agenda on my part
> to exploit any contributors, rather than looking at the issue itself.
>
> If you look at my email address, you might notice it is not a 'usual'
> one. And the documents I refer to WILL end up on an intranet, unless I
> take steps to ensure otherwise. 

Would releasing under a modified BY-SA which granted rights only to humans 
and 
defined any transfer between two humans as redistribution do anything for 
you?

Why is it such a certainty that these documents will end up only on an 
intranet and no one will repost them out to the wider world?

> What YOU have been advocating 
> (unintentionally) is that I 'exploit authors' and then put their work on
> a private intranet to which they have no access. I'm sorry - I'm not
> going to do that. What I want is open access where each author can
> follow their work. You have a problem with my methods. But your solution
> doesn't solve anything, and creates a lot more problems. Practical
> compromise vs. pointless idealism? Talk to me about solutions, not
> problems. And loose your poisonous cynicism.

I think we have been talking about solutions in the larger sense. For 
instance, under the system you seem to be proposing, you would get no 
contributions to your documents from me. I don't think I am unique in this 
attitude. Therefore, it makes sense, if possible, to modify the system to 
remove this impedimant.
>
> The CC licenses are not, in any way, perfect for every situation. 

Agreed, but I for one want copyleft works where ever possible. If someone 
wants my help with something, it therefore needs to be copyleft or there 
needs to be a very persuasive case for the alternative.

> The 
> fact that a CC is not suitable for mine does not make me evil incarnate
> hell bent on stealing other peoples work for my own profit. CC is a
> baby, born in 2002. I work with licenses such as the ACM Copyright
> Policy
> http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/
> who have had their license for 12 years - that's 3 times longer than CC
> has been around. They don't seem to have any trouble - indeed, quite the
> reverse.
>
> > If not, don't kid yourself that CC-ND and having
> > contributers assign copyright to you is anything
> > resembling Free or Sharing. Or at least, don't
> > try to kid me.
>
> Never have I tried to kid you - you should my posts more carefully. And,
> respectfully, I am educated well enough to understand the difference
> between 'freedom' and 'Freedom', thank you very much.
>
Greg has a thing about the market economy and the gift economy. Perhaps that 
came into play in that comment. He did say don't kid yourself or don't try to 
kid him. So, the first thought was that you were perhaps not thinking clearly 
as to the implications of  the system proposed and hence the "don't kid 
yourself." He may not have picked up on your Free versus free distincions. 
May don't. many don't make them even.

I think you example might be eased by my earlier thoughts as to the widom of 
a 
binding X license only or X and Y licenses only commitment clauses.

So, BY-ND. When contributors assign copyrights to you, have it as some sort 
of 
agreemtn whereby they assign it to you but you in turn agree never to release 
under anyhting but a BY-ND license. Would this do what you want?

Everyone can sell copies. (No one has a leg up there.) No one can use 
anything 
other than a BY-ND license. (No one has a leg up there.)

all the best,

drew
(da idea man)
-- 
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a song and you might win $1,000.00
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145