Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Monday 14 August 2006 10:45 pm, Greg London wrote:
> > On 13 Aug 2006, at 23:20, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> >> I'm surprised nobody AFAICT has suggested just that -- rather than
> >> disallow DRM, explicitly give authority to circumvent.  The DMCA
> >> seems to
> >> allow this
> >
> > It would be great if CC 3 licenses could give permission to
> > circumvent DRM when people do exercise their Fair Use rights to add
> > it. Someone at CC who IAL should definitely look at this.
> >
> > Two possible issues spring to my layperson's mind:
> >
> > * GPL 3 gives you permission as a *software* license to circumvent
> > DRM systems implemented by the *software* that is itself covered by
> > that license. Can CC 3, as a *content* license, give you permission
> > to circumvent any *software* that is written by a different author to
> > the content?
> >
> > * The GPL 3 is giving you the right to circumvent the system as a
> > whole, for every case of its use. CC 3 would have to give you
> > permission only for those specific cases where you need to break it
> > to access the work. But this still means that software (or the
> > knowledge that you need to hold down the shift key) must exist to
> > break the DRM generally for the benefit of any CC 3 users who wish to
> > do so.
>
> A CC license would authorize you to circumvent any DRM that
> restricts the rights to that particular CC work. Someone
> would have to reverse engineer it, but you said this
> is fairly easy in the community and if its legal, that
> should speed things up a bit.

Greg,

I am not sure, but you may be missing a tricky point wrt code and content.

IIRC, the clause in the GPL that is being referred to states that the code 
cannot be considered an effective technological "protection" measure and so 
there is nothing to legally circumvent. This will likely have the effect of 
keeping all covered code out of such implemented measures.

" No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological "protection" 
measure under section 1201 of Title 17 of the United States Code."

This could be entirely different from someone else trying to give permission 
to circumvent what is an effective technological "protection" measure. If so, 
this will most likely have the effect of keeping the content off of the 
protected platform which is the issue people are looking to solve.

(I may be totally off base here. I missed out on a lot of this discussion on 
account of a little jount to exotic florida during which time I never checked 
my email....
>
> Since CC licenses aren't meant for software, I don't see a
> need to authorize the circumvention of the work itself as
> if it were software, but hey, maybe that could get rolled in
> just to be safe?
>
> Of course, I haven't heard any yes/no statements from the
> Debian side of things, as to whether this would satisfy
> Debian's requirements, so it might be that this is all
> building castles out of mud.
>
> Last I heard, Debian decreed that DRM shall ahve no restrictions,
> no matter what, no exceptions, no forwarding address, no zip code.
>
> (Elvis)
> Retuuurrrn to Sender.
> Addresssss Unknown.
> No such number.
> No such zone.
> (/Elvis)

(Elvis)
Well, since my baby left me,
I found a new place to dwell.
It's down at the end of lonely street
at Heartbreak Hotel.
(/Elvis)

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a song and you might win $1,000.00
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145