Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Mike wrote:
> rather than disallow DRM, explicitly give authority
> to circumvent.  The DMCA seems to allow this --
>
>                 `(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to
>                 descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted
>                 work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate,
>                 or impair a technological measure, without the authority
>                 of the copyright owner; and
>

Hm, that's unexpected. I thought you needed authority from
the DRM company, like the hardware platform or something,
not the copyright holder. If this actually works this way,
then if the license grants the authority to circumvent,
and all derivatives -must- likewise grant the authority
to circumvent, then I believe the biggest barn door is
closed.

If any company attempts to exploit the FLOSS work on a
DRM platform, then they will be unable to use DRM to
enforce a monopoly.

I think the license should keep the piece that "TPM
cannot be used to restrict any rights to the work on
that platform", but if that clause is interpreted
narrowly in a court, then the explicit granting of
authority to circumvent will guarantee a minimum
level of protection.  And if the DMCA is changed so
that the granting of authority no longer works, then
the first part is the fall-back position.

It does mean that teh FLOSS community may have to
reverse engineer the DRM technology, but if all versions
of that work are required to grant authority to circumvent,
then at least it would be legal to do the work to
reverse engineer the DRM, and then anyone can create copies
of that work on teh player.

If both pieces mentioned above are in the license
(1) TPM cannot be used to restrict the use of any rights
of the work on that platform and
(2) the work and all derivatives of that work must
grant authority to circumvent any DRM for that work
then I think the vulnerability doors are closed, and
I wouldn't need a non-DRM copy be made available by
a distributer.

Anyone else?

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