Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

On Sat, 2006-12-08 at 18:15 -0400, Greg London 
> If DRM-Dave has a company that makes DRM players,
> and Dave goes out and converts some ShareAlike work
> to be DRM'ed so it plays on his hardware, then Dave
> must do so in such a way that Share-Alike-Sam can
> copy, distribute, and create derivative works, of
> that same work, on that same piece of hardware.

You make the mistake of assuming that it's Dave who wants to convert the
ShareAlike work. It could very well be a well-meaning redistributor --
OpSound, the Internet Archive, Google Video -- wishing to comply with
the terms of the license, yet also to reach a broad audience.

I love Creative Commons licensed media. I really do. But let us not fool
ourselves into thinking that the entertainment industry is drooling to
put Free Content onto their DRM-encumbered media players, held back only
by the noble powers of the anti-DRM clause. Sony has a huge catalogue of
music, video, and games -- they do not in any way need or want our Free
Content.

The people who will want or need to distribute works through
DRM-entangled channels will not be villains -- they will be friends of
Free Content, trying to share with others. Let's not demonize them.

> If a company is allowed to pull a work into DRM,
> and not allow people to copy, distribute, and
> create derivatives of that work on that DRM
> hardware, then you're allowing proprietary forks
> through technical measures.

So, I'm confused why it has to be possible to copy on the particular
hardware or platform. Typically, that's not in the distributor's
control, but the hardware manufacturer's.

~Evan