Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Mia Garlick wrote:
>  the substantive one is that, on taking the temperature of the "CC
>  community" it, for the most part, seems to agree that putting
>  restrictions on the ability of downstream licenses to place TPM on
>  content in such a way as to thwart the intent and effect of the
>  licenses is a bad thing.
(there appears to be an error here, but I think you are claiming there
to be a consensus that using TPM to "thwart the intent and effect
of the licenses" is a bad thing, not the restriction against imposing it).

Technically, that may be true -- but it doesn't lead to a consensus
on what to do about it.

I've seen at least four positions championed:

1) parallel distribution (i.e. accept the Debian recommendation)
2) leave it like it is in CC 2.5 licenses
3) allow DRM/TPM, but explicitly grant permission to crack it
4) make the DRM/TPM restriction a separate license module

IMHO, all have merits, all have problems, and there's a sizeable
group of somebodies who doesn't like each one of them.

I personally think that #1 and #3 are compatible, and if both were
applied, the original intent would be sufficiently safe-guarded while
permitting the edge cases that Debian is interested in. The most
important point is that this approach destroys most of the advantage
of using DRM, so there's little reason why anyone would attempt
it -- *except* for those specific "DRM platform" applications that
Debian wants to avoid restricting.

>  the practical consideration is that allowing people to mix and match
>  their license terms would add more complexity to the license
>  selection process.

This has always been true, and yet it is the fundamental raison d'etre
of the Creative Commons to allow precisely this mix-and-match
freedom.  This stance is contrary to the whole CC concept, so I find
it a bit bizarre.

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com