Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Friday 11 August 2006 12:41 pm, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-08 at 14:10 +0200, Paul Keller wrote:
> > frankly speaking i think it is a more or less
> > obscure discussion that deals with scenarios that constitute a tiny
> > minority of the re-uses on would expect for a CC licensed work (this
> > might off course change if TPM enabled/requiring platforms become
> > more widespread, but i dont think we should engage in preemptive
> > compliance here).
>
> I don't think this is preemptive. There are millions of people who have
> game consoles, text readers, and music players that require some sort of
> DRM. And even if it's just one person who can't use a work on one piece
> of hardware, it's still wrong.
>
> > in any case i do not think (and that judgment was
> > shared by a number of other project leads) that these fringe
> > scenarios are a good reason to make the licenses more complicated (if
> > we focus on anything that should be making them less complicated).
>
> We live in a complicated world with complicated legal regimes. The
> current licenses are mostly unreadable except by lawyers and Free
> Culture geeks. Leaving out 40-50 words isn't going to change that.
>
> However, I have to ask: if the text was less complicated than the one
> Mia attached, would that lower your resistance to the idea at all?
> What's your threshold for the length of additional clauses? 30 words? 20
> words? 0 words?
>
> > (3) if downstream users are forced to do so (by distributing it via
> > the PSP for example) they can request an extra permission. i guess
> > most licensors would be more than happy to grant this permission.
>
> If most licensors are happy to grant the permission, why don't we save
> everyone some hassle and put it in the license in the first place?

Because I, for one, am not happy to grant the permissions on my BY-SA works. 
I 
want there to be a cost for going with DRM platforms and that cost would at a 
minimum preclude full use of my works. Limited uses?

So again, should there be different clauses for different options?
>
> If we're trying to uncomplicate the process, I think adding 20-30 words
> to an already very long document is a lot less complicated than
> requiring licensees to track down licensors and ask permission for what
> most licensors would agree to anyways.
>
> > i do not see what is wrong with this approach.
>
> I'll throw out some scenarios: the licensor is dead. The licensor is
> anonymous or pseudonymous. There are so many copyright holders (e.g.,
> for a film or for a wiki) that tracking down the licensors to get
> separate permission from each one is an excessive burden. Licensor and
> licensee have to draw up some separate legal papers to document the
> permission, costing them time and money.

Bingo. And hence the pressure to drop DRM to get access to all of this 
wornderful, copyleft works that pile up with ever increasing copyright terms. 
Other than that, make your own works. Or pay me and the rest for a different 
license.
>
> Compared to adding a clause to the license, requiring additional
> permission is really a pain.
>
> > as long as scenarios like the PSP scenario are
> > exceptions i do not see the need to change the licenses.
>
> There have been more than 5 million PSPs sold in North America alone. Is
> that really an "exception"?
>
> ~Evan
>
all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
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