Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <teloscorbin AT gmail.com>]

Rob wrote:
> It is important that we are clear that DRM can
> simply defeat the CC licenses even on non-DRM
> platforms by making content usable only with
> DRM *software*.

Hm, I haven't really pondered DRM too much.
It appears to be a even stickier wicket than I thought.

The question I have is an extension of what I think
Rob is saying:

What good is a non-DRM version of a PS2 game
if it can only be played on a PS2 with DRM?

How is a PS2 game different from a proprietary fork?
You make a non-DRM version available,
you can copy it, you can distribute it, you can even
modify it. But you can't play the damn thing because
the only thing that can play it is PS2, and PS2 is
DRM'ed.

At some point, depending on the implementation of the
license, this could basically become quite a lot like
the LGPL, which allows you to tie into proprietary
libraries, and you can't really do much of anything unless
you have that library.

I don't think it's sufficient to require non-DRM copies
of DRM works, because the copy isn't much good
if the only way to play it, read it, use it, is through a PS2
or an iPod or some other DRM'ed hardware.

Yes, it woudl be nice if Alice could play Bob's game on
her PS2, but if Charlie doesn't have a PS2, and the DMCA
prevents him from running a PS2 simulator on his PC, then
this is little different than allowing proprietary forks for oddball
cases.

Charlie must be able to USE the non-DRM work in a
non-DRM fashion.