Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 12 Aug 2006, at 10:22, Henri Sivonen wrote:

> On Aug 10, 2006, at 23:03, Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
> > Again, I'll contrast to Free Software applications running on
> > proprietary operating systems. If the GPL had forbidden running or
> > developing a Free app on a propriety OS, there would be no Free
> > Software today.
>
> When the GNU Project started, they had to bootstrap on proprietary
> systems. When CC started there were--and still are--plenty of media
> players around that don't require technical protection measures in
> the mass-distributed data.
>
> For example, you can distribute DRMless files to iPod users. They put
> the files in the one-way iPod cage on their own. The distributor is
> not required to apply FairPlay. So the popularity of iPod is no
> reason for allowing DRM in *distribution*.
>
> I believe that PSP will also happily play DRMless MPEG-4 movies and
> display DRMless JPEG images. Please correct me if I am wrong. All in
> all, console games that require signing by the platform vendor are a
> fringe case when you consider the whole Free Culture spectrum.
>
> Besides, for a game to be Free, you have to be allowed to make
> modifications and run your modified version. If the ability to run
> your modified version requires you to go beg for signing by Sony, de
> facto the arrangement in non-Free as a whole and fails the Desert
> Island test.

This is all correct.

The proprietary OS comparison simply doesn't work. A proprietary OS  
doesn't prevent me editing the source code on it. A proprietary OS  
cannot prevent me moving the source code to another platform and  
compiling it there. And so on. This does not bear comparison to DRM  
in any way.

A much better comparison would be Trusted Computing. TP would defeat  
FOSS entryism. So does DRM. If someone only has an MP3 player with  
DRM on it they have worse problems than not being able to use CC- 
licensed works.

- Rob.