Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Saturday 24 June 2006 10:35 am, Greg London wrote:
> > I think that with the right agreements in place,
> > you could design a setup where the docs behaved
> > like BY-SA on wiki and BY-ND off wiki
>
> You cannot put CC-SA on a work, while limiting that
> work to a particular website. so this is no longer
> "like BY-SA" or like "Shareing" in any sense of the word.

No, but if you were willing to write your own licenses, you could do 
something 
other than what the range of CC licenses allow. (I am not making a case FOR 
doing so, but I think it may be able to be done.)
>
> The only way to achieve this would be to distribute
> the work CC-ND and have a wiki set up that accepts
> contributions under an agreement that contributers
> assign copyright to Phil.

The is not the only way. Plus, the agreement that assigns the copyrights to 
Phil could bind him as to his behaviour wrt the works and what he can and 
cannot do with them as a condition of the assignment as well.
>
> At this point, Phil may as well distribute the works
> All Rights Reserved and have a website that accepts
> contributions. He's only about half an inch from
> that point as it is. In the color spectrum,
> All Rights Reserved was red and CC-ND was orange,
> the two colors abutted each other.

Basically...

Set up the wiki. State that all works on the wiki behave as BY-SA so long as 
they remain on wiki. (You don't have to refer to CC, write a new license that 
says this if you have to.)

Works going off wiki are CC-ND.

In the assignment, Phil commits to only CC-ND off wiki as well. Phil also 
commits to content escrow with a trusted third party. Phil also commits to 
any of the contributors having the right to fork under the same conditions 
should the wiki go awol for x amount of time. (I had a late night so I may be 
missing a few of the key ideas needed to try and make this work. Again, I am 
not proposing this. Personally I vote for BY-SA. Bam Sookie!))
>
> Most importantly, and it seems that this point
> keeps getting forgotten, the idea of required
> notification of modifications being sent to the
> original author was suggested long ago in software
> circles and shot down specifically
> because it is too much baggage. So EVEN IF the
> work behaves like sharealike, and EVEN IF Phil
> acts as noble shepard protecting the work,
> Phil has stil implemented a system that has already
> been rejected by the software community as not Free.

That I know. And I don't particularly like the "invasion of privacy" aspects. 
However, since the only mods allowed would be "on wiki" I don't think the mod 
notices would be as bad from a baggage point of view as would a plain BY-Sa 
with mod requirements. Would they be?
>
> He can do it that way if he wishes. If he's got
> the rights to the original works, he can do whatever
> he wants. But don't expect anyone from the FLOSS
> community to bend over and say
> "Yeah, Phil, great Free project you got there"

If you are not BY or BY-SA (of the CC options) you are not going to hearthat 
from me. (At least not at this point.)
>
> Rather, anyone from the FLOSS community should
> be chanting the mantra:
> "It aint Free unless the license is Free."
>
> I could set up a project where the work is
> All Rights Reserved and anyone could go to
> my website to read the works. And I could
> accept contributions but require people
> assign copyright to me. But I can't call it
> Free, nor say it has anything to do with
> freedom, nor call it Sharing, or any of that.
>
> It aint Free unless the license is Free.
>
> I could have my All Rights Reserved project
> set up so people can use it, read it, and
> play with it, and argue that they must
> send modifications through me because only
> I the great maintainer of the work can be
> trusted to defend the true freedom of the work.
>
> And if I did that, someone from the FLOSS
> community better damn well be telling me
> I'm full of it.
>
> Bill Gates just released some sort of tool
> that allows people to mark their documents
> with CC licenses. He distributed this tool
> with an EULA that not only witholds certain
> rights of copyright, but extends the agreement
> to force the user to agree not to do things
> outside of copyright, such as reverse engineer
> the tool. But ol' Bill is offering this tool
> with a "trust me" look on his face. But I'd
> tell anyone to avoid his tool and just do the
> cut and paste yourself.
>
> It ain't Free unless the license is Free.
>
> Phil can do whatever he wants with works
> he owns the copyrights to, but anyone in
> the FLOSS community should be calling it
> what it is: not-Free, not-Sharing.

OK, no arguments with that at this point. If you read my back posts, you will 
know that I am BY-SA all the way. (wrt CC choices.)

However, if you were willing to do custom licenses, do you see any legal 
reason why you could not do something like proposed and still protect 
contributors from:

1. A person in Phil's place having an advantage over the others.

2. The site going "off net" as it were.

all the best,

drew
-- 
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